why waste the resources on the intelligence effort – especially when it can so easily be abused as it was in Iraq?

817 lesson 9 diss

Lesson 9 Discussion Forum
Question
In the mini-lecture for this topic, I asserted that in the cases of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, the United States acquired vastly more information of greater value and granularity from international inspections than from its massive intelligence efforts against those countries suspected WMD programs.  If this is the case, why waste the resources on the intelligence effort – especially when it can so easily be abused as it was in Iraq?
Do an initial post on the question, “Why should the U.S. invest so much effort into intelligence gathering on foreign WMD programs?”