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[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I've spent a fair amount of time on lengthy posts explaining what I think Bush was thinking, and what I hold him responsible for, and I think I've been pretty clear that I don't think he knew that there were no WMD and decided to tell people there were. It's much more like a reckless disregarded for the truth. Bush was convinced in some larger way that he was right, and the end justified the means -- he was willing to say what it took to drag an unwilling nation into a war he thought was justified. I concede that Bush did not care about the details about whether Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger -- actually, a damning point -- but he certainly is responsible for the fact that the people who wrote the State of the Union speech were more interested in saying whatever they could to scare people than they were in making sure they had things right. But every time I bother to spin this stuff out in any detail, whichever conservative I'm talking to disappears. Last time around it was club, and while he sent me a gracious PM regretting that he had to run and couldn't respond, where's the upside in laying out a nuanced view if you guys are just going to disappear on me.

And then there's this:

• On Friday, September 6, Franks and Rumsfeld briefed the president and the NSC on the latest war planning. . . . General Franks had something important to add. "Mr. President," he said, "we've been looking for Scud missiles and other weapons of mass destruction for ten years and haven't found any yet, so I can't tell you that I know that there are any specific weapons anywhere. I haven't seen Scud one."

Plan of Attack 173

• [On Saturday, September 7,] Blair and Bush took questions from reporters. They said they were committed to ending Saddam's threat one and for all. How or when went unanswered. Bush asserted unequivocally, "Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Plan of Attack 178

Bush's top general tells him they haven't found any WMD in ten years of looking, and the next day he's telling journalists -- unequivocally -- that Hussein has them. I'm not sure that lying is the worse-case scenario here.

Yet you conveniently leave out that in 2003 (i.e., much closer to the decision to go to war) Tenet told Bush it's a "slam dunk."