How the hell could we know that he didn’t have WMD? I don’t have access to all our intelligence information. Heck, I don’t know that you aren’t building a nuke in your basement, but I won’t tell people that I do and then say that I want to invade your house, perhaps killing a few members of your family in the process.
The point is that we were told that SH did have WMD. We weren’t told he might have WMD. We (meaning those who were skeptical of this Administration) kept asking for evidence and not finding it satisfactory. Plenty of people found Powell’s UN presentation unconvincing (although not many in Congress, it seems)–The Nation published at least two pieces saying he had not made a strong enough case.
Also, some things were known by us. It was known that the weapons inspectors were quite confident that Hussein hadn’t reconstituted any serious nuclear program. While chemical and biological weapons are easier to hide, it was at least known that the inspectors weren’t so far finding any under a pretty intrusive inspections regime. I also seem to recall that certain facts about the U.S./British intelligence were known like the forged Niger documents and the plagiarized British intelligence report, although I could be wrong on the timing of the former.
For the record, my feeling before the war was that, based on their past history, neither Bush nor Hussein had a shred of credibility whatsoever and so we had to go on independent verifiable facts. My wild-ass-guess was that the truth might lie somewhere “half-way” in between…i.e., Saddam has a bit of chemical or biological weapons but less than the Bush Administration claimed and nothing that justifies him being considered an imminent threat. As history has now taught me, my wild-ass-guess still managed to overestimate Bush’s credibility!
But, I don’t see what relevance it has whether we knew or not what SH had or did not have. Our knowledge was only based on what we were being told, largely by the Administration and some by independent sources like the inspectors. Bush’s knowledge was based on what he was being told which is a lot more than what we were being told. And, this Administration has hardly been forthcoming about exactly what Bush was told.
The Administration has thus far given us no reason to doubt that they were guilty at best of believing what they wanted to believe, cherry-picking intelligence, and overstating their confidence in what they believed. At worst, they were outright lying. Hell, people like Cheney continue to obfuscate to this day. And, Bush uses contorted phrases like “weapons-of-mass-destruction related program activities” to obfuscate.
And, there is plenty of evidence that this Administration considers misleading statements and outright lies to be one of the most trusted tools in its toolbox for convincing the public and others to go along with its policies in domestic policy areas ranging from tax policy to the environment.
