re: #126 Blind Frog Belly White

I blame Saddam, at least in part. Seriously - he knew that if anyone knew how weak he actually was, he’d be done for. So he portrayed himself as having cheated and kept his core WMD programs and having rebuilt his stocks, when he had done nothing of the sort.

And I blame America for buying into it. We forget, but even opponents of the war thought Saddam had the weapons. They just didn’t think it was worth going to war over, or they were concerned about the aftermath. This is why Hans Blix was ridiculed for not finding what wasn’t there - because pretty much everyone thought it was.

I don’t even know that Bush himself actually lied. I think he “knew” Saddam had the WMDs and so he believed every single shred of evidence for them no matter how flimsy, and didn’t believe any evidence no matter how solid to the contrary. We went to war for Confirmation Bias.

That’s the problem with Conservatism, BTW. It attracts and depends on people who “know” things even in the face of overwhelming counterevidence, because so much of Conservatism is bullshit.

For me it was knowing Iraq was a multiethnic and multi religious state that would have chaos if invaded.