WMDs and Bush - Lie or mistake?

[BCPVP]

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If the war went well, he knew that Americans wouldn't care about the justifications for going to war.

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I don't agree. Just because a war is going well, doesn't mean that it is garaunteed support or exempt from justification.

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We (as a country) would only care that: a) we won big, and b) few of our troops died.

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Relatively speaking, bot of these have happened. Yet we're still debating Iraq. Apparently there's more to war then just winning big with few losses...

[Roybert]

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We (as a country) would only care that: a) we won big, and b) few of our troops died.

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Relatively speaking, bot of these have happened. Yet we're still debating Iraq. Apparently there's more to war then just winning big with few losses...

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We're winning big? We don't have any idea what winning is and we have even less of an idea when we'll get out of there. This is due to an acute lack of leadership - Bush has never defined for the American people what needs to happen in order for us to 'win', and he has never told us when we can expect that to happen.

Bush's approval ratings were sky high on "Mission Accomplished" day and all of the doubts about the justifications for going to war were known then. Over time, these doubts have been more or less proven, and it is my contention that people are increasingly pessimistic because it is not going well. We are not winning big, and this coupled with a consistant casualty count is causing the public outcry.

[John Ho]

If politicians were never reelected because they lied to the public nobody would ever get reelected.

That being said...I think they wanted the war so much (for what they thought were legit reasons) that they would not be dissuaded unless there was slam dunk proof that Saddam DIDN'T have WMDs anymore. Which of course was not going to happen.

My vote isn't there...it's a little bit of both options. But certainly Cheney lied like crazy by implying Saddam was linked to 9/11. No doubt there. Bush wasn't as blatant but there is no doubt he knew and approved what Cheney was saying.

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George Bush is a politician, agreed?
Politicians like to be re-elected, agreed?
The lack of WMDs would be found out if we invaded, agreed?
So why would Bush take the chance to not get relected by openly lying? What did he gain from that "lie"?
Wouldn't you agree that had Bush just stomped all over Afghanistan and done absolutely nothing about Iraq, he probably could have won big over any challenger? So why take the risk?

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[vulturesrow]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
haha, people really think we had faulty intelligence?!?!?!

Are you retarded? Seriously America knows exactly whats going on all over the world all the time, the only way we would be tricked is by some highly funded, high tech operation. There is no way we could not see every square inch of iraq before we invaded.

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You obviously have no real concept of how intelligence is gathered other than what youve seen in the movies.

hey moron,
walk away from the X-box. Even though Hi Tech is great, we cant see through clouds, rock, mountains, or even most thin metal roofs like most warehouses have. Turn off Sci-Fi channel, and read a newspaper.(preferably not the NY times)
P.S. Remember the lines of trucks enroute to Syria in the 3 weeks leading up to the war, what were they carrying??? oh yeah, X-boxes....

[elwoodblues]

I would say a little from column A and a litle from column B. In my opinion, the lie was not their belief that there were WMDs, but rather the lie was their characterization of the case. It's one thing to say, we have evidence, some of it is stronger than other parts of it, but that evidence leads me to the conclusion that Saddam has WMDs. It's another thing to suggest that the evidence is rock-solid when it isn't.

[Wes ManTooth]

I did not vote for this poll either way, I can't clearly say one side is right or wrong.

Saying it was a clear cut lie is difficult to believe

Though publicly no actual finished WMDs were found, just based on the size of materials found its difficult to suggests that Saddam was not up to anything suspicious.

I think they were fairly certain he had at least some kind of chemical weapons. The nuclear and biological stuff, I think they lied, or at least they intentionally deceived themselves and believed some very flimsy evidence.

There's no reason to blame this on the CIA or other intelligence-gathering agencies. In the buildup to the war, the White House was pressuring and attacking the CIA because the CIA wasn't gung-ho enough. Remember they set up their own intelligence office in Defense to "stovepipe" whatever evidence they could find that supported going to war?

No, the Bushies had determined that they were going to invade Iraq, and they used whatever evidence they could find, manipulate, or create to justify their decision.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

I voted for lie. Do I know it was a lie? No. But I find it most probable.

I think what is important to consider when judging this is how the game of high-level politics plays out in 2 phases:

Decision making:
An informal network gather information and combined with their personal beliefs (this matters most) they make a decision on which action they want to take (in this case attack Iraq).

Defending their decision:
In defending their decision, their original reasons and information is mostly considered irrelevant. What is important in this phase is to "sell" the decision to the population, poweful domestic political allies and potentially foreign nations. The claims about WMDs were made as a part of this phase, and since Bush really needed selling points both towards his own population and towards foreign countries, to believe that he would not manipulate the evidence is extremely naive (any president in any major country from any party would do that).

That being said, it is very possible that ex-Iraqis and others managed to manipulate the decision process, so it is possible that Bush made his decision on the wrong foundation, but when entering into the selling phase it must have become evident for him anyway that the evidence did not hold up (you could see this in the US' attempt to avoid real discussion about the evidence and their eagerness to avoid further inspections).

[lehighguy]

Is neglectful/avoidable mistake an option.