The thing is compliance was impossible because the weapons did not actually exist. Saddam's underlings were lying to him, claiming things that never happened.

The thing is compliance was impossible because the weapons did not actually exist. Saddam's underlings were lying to him, claiming things that never happened. Our inspectors kept letting stuff slip through our fingers because it wasn't really there. Intel would tell them to look at X. We would go to X, find nothing. Whoever was in charge of X would report to Saddam that they successfully moved the stuff away from the inspectors. We were tapping their communications and thinking we were failing when in reality there was never anything there--we had already destroyed all the real stuff. It was all a massive deception, but not aimed at us. Saddam was emboldened by apparently repeatedly giving us the finger when in reality he didn't have a hand to raise at all.