As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “172. On 25 February, Mr Blair told the House of Commons that the intelligence was ‘clear’ that Saddam Hussein continued ‘to believe that his weapons of mass destruction programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression’. It was also ‘essential to his regional power’. ‘Prior to the inspectors coming back in’, Saddam Hussein ‘was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of those weapons’. The inspectors had reported some co-operation on process, but had ‘denied progress on substance’.”
– Commissioned by the Prime Minister The Right Honourable Gordon Brown MP, “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Executive Summary,” IraqInquiry.org.uk, Feb. 25, 2003