Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, April 12 2006 @ 01:16 PM CST
In retrospect it is clear that the weapons did not exist, although they had in the past, and Hussein had used them against his enemies. But what is also clear from captured documents now coming to light is that Mr. Bush had every reason to believe they still existed at the time he launched the military campaign in Iraq. Not only did US and allied intelligence agencies assert that the weapons were there, but Hussein himself played a dangerous game of convincing enemies such as Iran, and even his own generals, that he had such weapons, while protesting to United Nations inspectors that he did not.
While Bush may have been badly misled by his own intelligence and other sources, he did not lie. He believed, and had good reason to believe, that the weapons existed.
If you continue to believe “Bush Lied” then you, my friend, are either being misled in exactly the same way Bush was, with “inaccurate intelligence from trusted sources” or you are yourself a willful liar. There is no other option–dupe? or liar? What are you?
As described in Hughes’ article, captured Iraqi documents show that even Saddam’s military believed until December, 2002 that Iraq had a flourishing WMD program. Hussein was brought down in early April of 2003.
But within Hussein’s war council, the story was verydifferent. In December 2002, Hussein called his generals together for asurprising announcement: Iraq did not possess WMD. The generals werestunned. They had long assumed that they could count on a hidden cacheof chemical or biological weapons. Iraq had used such weapons in thewar with Iran. Hussein had convinced his generals that it was thethreat of WMD that had enabled him to stop the Americans moving onBaghdad after the 1991 war.
If someone points a gun at you and tells you it’s loaded, it’s usually a good idea to believe them.