[dextorious]

"""I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons."""

What experts? Bush appointed bozos? Media pundits, the John C. Dvorak's of the political world? "Intelligence" agents? The whole WMD charge was a thin veiled excuse of invasion to take control of the petrol supply. They could care less about WMD, not to mention that it's not the US job to say what another state should or should not have those. Doesn't the US have WMD aplenty? Doesn't Russia? Doesn't half of Europe? Doesn't Israel? I don't see any invasions there.

Just think how difficult it is to get accurate and intelligent tech reporting in the US media, and then think how more difficult it would be if there is political pressure and huge economic and geo-strategical interests.

"""You think the Economist relied solely on Fox News and Bush intelligence when believing that Iraq had WMDs?"""

No, I believe that the Economist in general tries to accommodate the interests of the ruling economic elite. It's FOX News for rich, neoliberal people, and in fact it wears its biases on its sleeve.

[speleding]

Forget all the experts: You have a mad men who previously used WMDs on his own population, flagrantly ignored 20 UN resolutions to give them up, actually claimed he had WMDs at some point, and now all of a sudden he has given them up just like that?

You can claim that is "obvious" behavior now that we haven't been able to find them, but it really wasn't obvious back then. A lot of mistakes were made, the Economist concedes that too, but rewriting history to fit your cause really isn't helping the debate.