The most-asked question of the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein remains unanswered: Why didn't the Iraqi dictator use his alleged weapons of mass destruction against coalition forces?
The niggling query may be hypothetical and now seemingly irrelevant, but it goes to the heart of the debate over whether the United States and Britain were justified in going to war. The matter becomes one of morals if no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons - the risks Iraq posed to global security - are found.
We are not the only ones eager for an answer. Iraqis, free of the shackles of Mr Hussein's regime, have as much interest in knowing - for the sake of the future of their country and understanding how they got to this point in their history.
Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix is as intrigued as the rest of us. He wants to resume the work he and his team were mandated to do by the international community. The US says Mr Blix's presence is unnecessary, as it has a team of American, British and Australian officials who are already searching for biological and chemical weapons. US officials - peeved by Mr Blix's claims that American intelligence about weapons sites was flawed - said he would be more a hindrance than a help.
There is a growing chorus, though, that an independent team of inspectors is necessary. The cynics believe the US and Britain might try to plant evidence. Former UN weapons inspector Olivia Bosch, now a senior research fellow with the New Security Issues Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, said that, ideally, the world body should have a role. For now, security was still a problem, so the coalition forces were needed to find and secure weapons sites. After that was ensured, civilian inspectors could participate.
'The UN team could be present when interviews with scientists involved in the weapons programmes take place,' Ms Bosch said. 'It would be preferable that there be some kind of working together on the process and, essentially, including the Iraqis. If anyone needs to know what happened with the programmes, they do. This is not just about justifying the war - it's about Iraqis coming to terms with their past.'
Ms Bosch worked in Iraq in 1996 on the destruction of the biological weapons facility at Al-Hakam, southwest of Baghdad. Iraqi officials had said it was a bio-pesticide and animal feed production facility. Thousands of pages of documents found by inspectors the year before pointed towards anthrax being produced there, but none was found.