Quote Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman View Post
You forget that in 2002 there was no doubt on anyone's side. Not one intelligence agency in the entire world doubted the existence of WMD in Iraq. The argument in 2002 was never about whether Saddam had and was developing weapons, it was whether we should invade or not.

The best proof of his having weapons was the fact that he acted exactly as we would have expected if he had weapons. Indeed he did have 500 metric tons of non-weaponized Uranium. But the problem was that Saddam decieved us. While Vice-President Cheney has plenty of problems to criticize him over, he is no more of a liar than someone who is fooled by a magician into thinking there is a coin in his hand.
Sorry, but you merely missed all those doubts that persisted around the world.
The U.S. intelligence services were quite reluctant and careful as well.

Besides; your "best proof" is no proof at all - it's at best a weak indication.

A full discussion of Cheney would take weeks, but this is obvious to me and I fail to understand how you can disagree (albeit I've read a lot about psychological explanations for such behaviour, like cognitive dissonance):

Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rove and others wanted war with Iraq for stupid reasons, they (especially the smarter ones; Cheney and Rove) manipulated and manipulated in order to get support (thereby ruining the reality-based intelligence services into mere servants). They had no good evidence at all, used their pre-conceived conclusions and lied to the world.
There were dozens of well-documented and proved lies.

The Iraq war was based on a house of lies built by the U.S. government at the highest levels.

I understand it's hard to accept if you suddenly find yourself on the team that turned out to 'not have been the good guys'.
Most people turn to a tunnel vision and ignore all conflicting evidence once they find themselves in such a situation.
Psychologists have done studies that show a huge percentage of people cannot change their mind that late even if faced with perfect evidence of their error. It's almost unbelievable how tricky the human mind is.

Nevertheless, the sh** has already hit the fan, now it's time to draw lessons, to improve the understanding of other nations/people who have been, are or will be in similar situations (Serbs, for example - or even "reconcilable" Taleban) and to watch out that the real history will be remembered, not a spin doctor version.


A bit back2topic; re-writing history is also an important part of propaganda. It's also a very powerful thing, if you've got the right levers.