re: #123 klys

So what do you make of the claims the administration made to the American people? Shoddy intelligence or deliberate fraud?

The former, plus a desire to give Tony Blair political cover. George Bush could have sued Saddam Hussein’s other actions and sold taking him out to America, but Blair was worried such a course would be seen as ‘illegal’ in the UK, since it would have been done in support of a Security Council resolution but without the SC authorizing force (which Russia and China were never going to allow). WMD’s were thought the route that would give Blair the needed justification.

In retrospect, we should have let the British stand aside, made a stronger case and then gone it alone. in that scenario, the rape rooms and children’s prison we found would have helped prove the justification, instead of being seen as excuses for its failure.