# Did the President mislead about Saddam's WMDs, nukes and terrorists? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 20, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532 "2003-08-20T21:42:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/1 "2003-08-20T21:42:36Z")
The President said: > [@](#): > > The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists… > > In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. I admit that the President flatly claimed that Iraq had WMDs ready to use and that he might provide them to terrorists. He did assert that the nuclear efforts would continue. It’s true that _so far_ we haven’t found any Iraqi WMDs and there’s no evidence that Saddam ever provided any to terrorists. We haven’t found any nuclear weapons or an active weapons program. **Was the President lying or misleading us?** I’d say he was not lying or misleading. WMDs may yet be found. A dormant nuclear program may have existed. There was always a _possibility_ that Saddam would provide whatever weapons he had to terrorists. Even if the President turns out to have been wrong, his statement was presumably based on what the best intelligence experts were telling him. He can’t do the intelligence work himself. He has to base his policy on what the experts tell him. I don’t see how he can be faulted for this statement. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/2 "2003-08-20T21:47:06Z")
I disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Sterra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/3 "2003-08-20T21:52:59Z")
At the very least we do know that Blair knew there was no immediate threat of Iraqi WMDs. > **[No 10 knew: Iraq no threat](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/aug/19/uk.bbc1)** > > One of the prime minister's closest advisers issued a private warning that it would be wrong for Tony Blair to claim Iraq's banned weapons programme showed Saddam Hussein presented an 'imminent threat' to the west or even his Arab neighbours. By... I would say that it is more likely that Bush simply ignored anyone who gave intelligence contrary to his beliefs. He does not have to listen to what the experts tell him. He can always replace them with untrained people who are willing to tell him what he wants to hear. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/4 "2003-08-20T21:54:32Z")
Time for another dose of reality: [**Bush Lies**](http://www.bushlies.net/pages/1/index.htm) Use as needed. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_Mexico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f6c823/32.png) [@Roger\_Mexico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_Mexico)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/5 "2003-08-20T21:55:08Z")
I don’t think the Resident thinks or knows anything, he just reads the script that is put in front of him. In that sense he did not lie or mislead. And sure, there is the possibility that Saddam has WMDs and might possibly give them to terrorists. There is also the possibility that the bogeyman will jump out of your closet and zap you with a kyrptonite death ray. Americans have become a nation of fools and cowards. Bush, as president {sic} and commander-in-chief, he should take full responsibility for the mistakes and/or deceptions of those in his government and resign to go work in an artificial limb factory supplying prosthetic devices for the American soldiers who lost arms and legs in the war. And it is going to end up costing us an arm and a leg. How about spending $600 billion to rebuild America instead of Iraq? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/6 "2003-08-20T22:01:27Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Roger\_Mexico \* > \*\* There is also the possibility that the bogeyman will jump out of your closet and zap you with a kyrptonite death ray._\* Would that be a '20s style kyrptonite death ray? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/7 "2003-08-20T22:06:20Z")
I’ll go with misleading us. When the rental agent assures me that the condo I’m renting in the Seychelles has a beachfront view, and he shows me a glossy brochure of beachfront condos in the Seychelles, I’ll feel royally mislead when the I get to the islands and it turns out that my home away from home is located 6 miles inland, and surrounded by strip malls. It makes no difference what the damned rental agent thinks is true or not. He told me how it was, that’s not how it turned out, and it _pisses me off_ ! I see no reason to hold the president to a lower standard. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/8 "2003-08-20T22:09:31Z")
I agree with the OP that the possibility at least exists that there were Iraqi WMDs and a nuke program. But the fact that one of his key pieces of evidence, the African uranian documents, turned out to be a forgery, casts great doubt. It was such a bad forgery, that either he is was lying, or his intelligence is so flawed that his statements are worth no more than the statements of someone purposely attempting to mislead. Also: > [@](#): > > There was always a possibility that Saddam would provide whatever weapons he had to terrorists. if that is the standard to invade a country, then god help the world. Everybody with weaponry for self defense is open game, in **december’s** book. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/9 "2003-08-20T22:10:56Z")
Bush said “intelligence reports show” WMD and a nuclear programs. No doubt some did, but he didn’t say that some did not. He also made a direct, unmodified statement that Iraq gave aid and comfort to Al Qaeda members. So, he was lying about terrorists. He was not strictly lying about WMDs, but impression I had was that we had introvertible evidence for them, which was not true. Further evidence that he knew this was not true - there was no attempt to use this evidence to convince other countries to join the coalition. The interesting question is whether Bush knew he was lying, or if he was fed a story by Cheney and Rummy, and was convinced of the truth of what he was saying at the time of the speech. The evidence against this is that he has not attempted to take any action against those who lied to him. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/10 "2003-08-20T22:23:36Z")
Yep…So Did Condi, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Perle…hmmm…have I left anyone out? Well…actually Wolfowitz as been rather honest lately…what with him saying that the war was said to be over WMD was because that’s the only thing they could reach consensus on. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/11 "2003-08-20T22:36:39Z")
I think it might still be more fair to say “misinformed”, absent documentary evidence. But that is the limit of generosity possible, too many times divergent views were published in such a way as to make it impossible for him not to have suspected, at the very least, that he was being led astray. Case in point: when the alleged Trailers of Nuclear Anthrax were discovered, their actual function was under dispute from day one, with experts flatly contradicting the Bushiviks position. Yet, when GeeDubya went to Warsaw, he gave an interview baldly stating the view that the dreaded Trailers were, in fact, mobile biowar laboratories without so much as a hint of caveat, without even suggesting that any other viewpoint was plausible. Willfull ignorance is distinct from out and out mendacity, in much the same way as seduction is distinct from rape. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/12 "2003-08-20T22:45:10Z")
> [@](#): > > I’d say he was not lying or misleading. WMDs may yet be found. A dormant nuclear program may have existed. There was always a possibility that Saddam would provide whatever weapons he had to terrorists. > > Even if the President turns out to have been wrong, his statement was presumably based on what the best intelligence experts were telling him. He can’t do the intelligence work himself. He has to base his policy on what the experts tell him. He lied. _If_ WMDs are found, his presentation was still a lie, in that each bit of evidence he contrived to present was manufactured or distorted and his administration did nothing to secure the sites where the WMDs would have been presumably found, indicating that they did not believe their own rhetoric. _If_ WMDs are found, it will have been a tremendous accident. All the evidence regarding the nuclear program produced, to date, have been lies. Since he used manufactured evidence, even if any such program existed, he lied about it. He clearly lied about connections to al Qaida and exaggerated to the point of lying the connections to actual terrorists other than al Qaida. As to his intelligence services, all the information that has come out in the last seven months indicates that he was told what they were ordered to tell him, playing up (or manufacturing) any remote hint of WMD/nuclear/terrorist connections and being forced to suppress all the counter information that indicated that the public lies were clearly being used to rationalize the Iraq invasion, which was championed long before Bush took office. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/13 "2003-08-20T22:58:44Z")
As I see it, there are two possibilities: 1. George W. Bush knew that the odds were very low that Iraq had WMDs and would provide them to terrorists, but lied to everyone else that there was an imminent risk. 2. George W. Bush was fed bullshit data from Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/whoever about how Iraq was an imminent threat, then sincerely passed that bullshit to the rest of us. While one may split semantic hairs and argue that Bush was not _technically_ lying in the latter case (“He _thought_ it was the truth!”), neither alternative paints a flattering portrait of the man. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/14 "2003-08-20T23:22:48Z")
Come on, **december** , at what point do you admit there are no weapons of mass destruction? Six months? A year? Ten years? There has to be a cut off some time; I would really like to know where even you draw the line. Or does Bush get an open-ended free pass from you, with no requirement to ever be accountable for the statements he made to the country? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/15 "2003-08-20T23:22:58Z")
Mighty thin gruel you’re feeding the poor kids today, December. Your argument is that there exists the possibility that Bush told the truth. That’s pretty hard to argue with unless Bush gives a speach and says “I lied”. But I’m sure that won’t stop the two sides from slinging opinions back and forth on this thread without changing anyone’s mind one iota. If only that energy could be bottled somehow. No more Blackouts for NY!! ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/16 "2003-08-20T23:28:52Z")
Lied. I believe this because never in my life have I seen an administration try to sell a war so hard. Now Ashcroft is going around trying to sell the Patriot Act. Sell, sell, sell. Why are they trying so hard to sell us these things? Yet Clinton is the one that’s the bad, bad liar. I’m living in a goddamn Kafka nightmare. For illustrative purposes: lying about a blowjob lying to sell an invasion ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/17 "2003-08-20T23:31:11Z")
Don’t I remember that there was going to be some big exposure of evidence to come in September and we were going to wait for that announcement? ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2003, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/18 "2003-08-20T23:34:26Z")
…yeah, the CIA should be done planting the evidence by then… ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_Mexico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f6c823/32.png) [@Roger\_Mexico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_Mexico)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/19 "2003-08-21T01:02:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Captain Amazing \* > \*\*Would that be a '20s style kyrptonite death ray? \*\* Did you intentionally repeat my spelling error or did you merely cut and paste? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532/20 "2003-08-21T01:17:09Z")
Actually, I accidentally repeated your spelling error. I retyped what you had typed, not realizing you had misspelled Kryptonite (and actually didn’t notice it until I just read your message). 🙂 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-president-mislead-about-saddams-wmds-nukes-and-terrorists/196532.md?page=2)