re: Do you think George Bush lied about the WOMD?

Technically, not a lie. It is very complicated.

First of all, Saddam had shite tons of WMDs - we know this because he used them (mainly chemical weapons) and we found a shite ton of old Soviet stocks leftover from the Iran-Iraq War after the invasion.

Second of all, Saddam had, over the years, pursued various pathways to nuclear weapons (what does a SW Asian nation with more oil than sand need with nuclear "power"?). To a degree, the corruption under him had him believing he was buying more capability than he was actually getting because underlings were stealing the money.

Third, the intelligence was both cherry picked and manipulated. Not just the Western Alliance's intelligence community, but Curveball himself - he was selling the same "intel" (which he was juicing to up the value) to everyone and there isn't a really good deconfliction ("G2X in the Sky" kind of thing) authority across international boundaries to let folks know that this was a single source (however reliable some felt he was, if they all had known that we were going to go to war over the word of, mainly, Curveball, someone might have hit pause).


Now, having said all of that, this is how the world has gone to war for over 100 years now. Half blind, through the smoke and fog, stumbling and bumbling and often times at the behest of unseen forces.