# Did former president Bush manufacture a reason to invade Iraq or was he misled by bad intelligence he thought was correct? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 7, 2024, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912 "2024-09-07T16:29:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/1 "2024-09-07T16:29:11Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Dick Cheney endorses Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-cheney-endorses-harris/1006881/39): > [@Dick Cheney endorses Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-cheney-endorses-harris/1006881/36): > > That was an [intelligence community failure](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/iraq-war-wmds-an-intelligence-failure-or-white-house-spin/), not deliberate W. lying. > [@Dick Cheney endorses Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-cheney-endorses-harris/1006881/39): > > > [@Dick Cheney endorses Harris](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dick-cheney-endorses-harris/1006881/37): > > > > And yet Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to CIA director (at the time) George Tenet for a job well done? 🙄 > > At the time, I believe, it was reasonable to presume the CIA had done their job correctly. Wasn’t it after W.'s term that everyone realized how much of the intelligence gathers was BS? I’m thinking of Hans Blick’s report to the UN in 2003 basically saying Saddam wanted the world to think he had WMDs. I think this was veering off topic in the P&E thread so I moved it here. I hope that is ok. I do not have time to answer right now but I will try later. Of course, anyone else chime in. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/2 "2024-09-07T16:31:03Z")
I suspect there was a feeling in his head that Iraq was “unfinished business,” since his father (rightfully) chose to not go further than merely ejecting Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. The other aspect of the whole WMD debate that often goes ignored is - even _if_ Iraq had WMDs, that wasn’t a casus belli. Numerous nations in the world had WMDs. The United States itself has thousands of WMDs. So the crowd that keeps saying “The intel about WMDs in Iraq was a lie” often misses that key point. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/3 "2024-09-07T16:31:52Z")
People knew the excuses for war given by the W admin were bullshit right from the beginning. Example: WMDs? Oh, boy. Where? ---
**Author:** ![GailForce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dfb087/32.png) [@GailForce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GailForce)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/4 "2024-09-07T16:37:23Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > bullshit right from the beginning And yet he got leftwingers like me thinking “He can’t be lying. It’s too easily proven, and he knows he’ll look like a total idiot when his lie gets exposed. Plus, I’m really pissed about 9/11 now, so yeah, GO, W.! BOMB THEM TO RUBBLE, AND THEN BOMB THE RUBBLE!” Fool me once, you’ve fooled me once, but fool me twice and you’ve fooled me twice. I think that’s how it goes. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/5 "2024-09-07T16:41:23Z")
> [@GailForce](#): > > Plus, I’m really pissed about 9/11… Yes, this made it much easier for Americans to accept that we were blowing shit up _somewhere_. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/6 "2024-09-07T16:41:36Z")
Thank you for saving us from getting modded for hijacking. IMHO the W. administration suffered from many lies that people believe to this day. Remember how he held that book upside down at the school. I know you have the picture engraved in your brain. [Except that’s a hoax](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bush-upside-book/). As for Iraq, there is ample evidence, even at the time that the intelligence community failed in ascertaining if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Part of it was due to Hussein deliberately misleading the UN (not US) inspection team to imply they had WMDs without showing any. It is hard to disprove a negative especially when the party in question is using the negative to prove the positive. Just ban the inspection team from this site and lose the paperwork on that site and voila - the opposite of plausible deniability (no clue what that would be called). Now put yourself in W.'s shoes. Given every implication _at the time_ as to Iraq having WMDs, do you wait, possibly forever, to get positive confirmation of the weapons or do you go based on the best suggestions of your advisors? My impression at the time was that Hussein was trying to goad the US into war based on Kuwait. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/7 "2024-09-07T16:42:20Z")
It was pretty clear at the time it was all a lie. For example there was the time they accidentally used their internal name for the operation in a press conference, Operation Iraqi Liberation - OIL. Then there was how they pushed forward their attack to pre-empt the UN investigations that would have proven their lies. Then there was how they openly boasted about how the war was going to make a profit. And the way the whole affair closely followed the Project for a New American Century plan (until it was derailed when the Iraqi occupation didn’t work out like they planned). _Then_ there was the way US troops ignored the supposed WMD sites and Iraqi military armories to reach their primary target - the Iraqi Oil Ministry. It was about seizing control of the Iraqi oil and the intended colonization of Iraq and afterwards, the entire region. Not WMDs. They barely even pretended otherwise until after the occupation turned into a disaster, then they pretended it was never about oil and everyone went along with it because of the near-compulsive need to make excuses for Republicans in our culture. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/8 "2024-09-07T16:43:16Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > My impression at the time was that Hussein was trying to goad the US into war based on Kuwait. …Why would he do that? Kuwait was a resounding defeat for him. If he goaded the U.S. into war a 2nd time, it would mean a 2nd resounding defeat. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/9 "2024-09-07T16:44:23Z")
I have no clue. It’s like the 98lb weakling trying to goad The Rock into a fight. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/10 "2024-09-07T16:46:13Z")
They wanted to do it so the gathered up whatever weak ass bullshit that they could to support the conclusion that they already had. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/11 "2024-09-07T16:53:58Z")
> [@GailForce](#): > > Plus, I’m really pissed about 9/11 now, so yeah, GO, W.! BOMB THEM TO RUBBLE, AND THEN BOMB THE RUBBLE!” I recall hearing at the time how Dick Cheney’s first reaction to the 9/11 attack was to go around telling everyone that a way _had_ to be found to tie it to Iraq to justify an attack. Just as his reported reaction to the Enron-manufactured energy crisis in California was to start drawing up plans for an attack on Iraq, hoping to use _that_ as a justification. Cheney _really_ wanted to conquer Iraq, and Bush bordered on his puppet. Bush is stupid and willfully ignorant so I’m not entirely sure how much _he_ did or didn’t know, but I don’t think he can be said to have been “misled” by bad intelligence when he made sure he’d only hear what he and Cheney _wanted_ to hear. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/12 "2024-09-07T16:54:43Z")
The OP stance, IMHO, is WAY too reductive. This was evil, not stupid: > **[Office of Special Plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans)** > > The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then–United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with raw intelligence (unvetted by intelligence analysts, see Stovepiping) pertaining to Iraq. A similar unit, called the Iranian Directorate, was created several years later, in 2006, to deal with in In... They bypassed normal channels in the same way that Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Europe to dig up dirt on Biden. It was a foregone conclusion in search of a rationale and in possession of the mechanism to fabricate one. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/13 "2024-09-07T17:02:17Z")
Personally, I never thought of Bush the Lesses as anything but an easily manipulated tool in the hands of Dick Cheney (at least wrt foreign policy). So my answer to the question as written is “No.” To the corollary question, _Did former vice president Cheney manufacture a reason to invade Iraq or was he misled by bad intelligence he thought was correct?_, the right answer is “that first thing.” ---
**Author:** ![Quondam\_Mechanic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quondam_mechanic/32/3404_2.png) [@Quondam\_Mechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quondam_Mechanic)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/14 "2024-09-07T17:05:35Z")
One should remember that British intelligence was also a party to the dubious? fake? erroneous? stuff. Yes, they might have been willing to play along with W, but… ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/15 "2024-09-07T17:50:14Z")
He did it because, “They tried to kill my Dad!” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/16 "2024-09-07T18:40:47Z")
The intelligence community delivered bad intelligence, yes. But they did that because the Bush administration told them to deliver that bad intelligence. When you tell people what you want to hear, you can’t blame them for misinforming you. ---
**Author:** ![FrenchDunadan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frenchdunadan/32/5449_2.png) [@FrenchDunadan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrenchDunadan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/17 "2024-09-07T18:47:48Z")
Beside that, Saddam actually tough after 9/11 that his relations with the USA will be better: the terrorist attacks had been orchestrated by Al-Quaida and this organization was fought by Saddam (dictators typically don’t like religious zealots that promote a “all behind me for the greater good” vibe) He planned to give intel and participate in the hunt, alongside the West… no being scapegoated and terminated. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/18 "2024-09-07T19:20:52Z")
> [@FrenchDunadan](#): > > Beside that, Saddam actually tough after 9/11 that his relations with the USA will be better: the terrorist attacks had been orchestrated by Al-Quaida and this organization was fought by Saddam (dictators typically don’t like religious zealots that promote a “all behind me for the greater good” vibe) Also, they hated him specifically because he was a _secular_ dictator. One of Al Qaeda’s bigger victories was the US killing him for them, and inciting religious warfare among the Iraqis. Also a victory for the American religious right, since they’d prefer religious fundamentalism of any sort to secularism. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/19 "2024-09-07T20:30:49Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It was about seizing control of the Iraqi oil and the intended colonization of Iraq and afterwards, the entire region. 🤣 The colonization of Iraq and the entire region? That’s hillarious. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912/20 "2024-09-07T20:48:45Z")
Surely that’s a claim that’s got at least _a smidge_ of evidence backing it, right? …right? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-former-president-bush-manufacture-a-reason-to-invade-iraq-or-was-he-misled-by-bad-intelligence-he-thought-was-correct/1006912.md?page=2)