[bryanlarsen]

I think that's largely a case of selective memory. People often have a rosy memory of what they believed.

Bush said he had clear evidence of WMD's in Iraq, that he showed this to Blair and Blair confirmed. I think it would be fair to say that most people would agree that Hussein wanted WMD's.

So I think it's fair to think that most Americans and most in the international community believed that Iraq had WMD's. The argument was mostly over whether an invasion was an appropriate response.

It was only "crazies" who believed both that Bush lied and that he was able to either snooker Blair or convince him to join in the lie.

Sometimes the crazies are right, though.

[pessimizer]

I think the selective memory comes in when people claim that there weren't a huge number of people that thought and proclaimed loudly that the evidence was bunk at the time. It's the same type of historical retcon that happens when people say that no one could see the housing bubble coming, and that everyone during slavery/segregation thought black people were inferior, so no one should be judged terrible for it because they were "of their time."

The television was always sure that the war was necessary, that Powell's speech was coherent, and that the government always knows best because it has access to secret sources that it can't reveal and our best interests at heart. Of course, the television is also in the arms business.

[AkThhhpppt]

Um... I was on anti Iraq war demos when I was 18, because it was obvious to me Saddam Hussein had no WMDs. And I was _not_ alone in this assumption:

"In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city's largest demonstration ever." Source: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Protest-Iraq-War16feb03...

[bryanlarsen]

But I bet that most of those 750,000 believed that Iraq had WMD's of some sort, perhaps very limited in capability.

But they also believed that a war was an inappropriate response to the existence of those WMD's.

[AkThhhpppt]

No, it was more or less assumed to be bollocks. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix#Iraq_disarmament_.27... for an idea of what we were hearing).

[AkThhhpppt]

*Correction: and those who didn't assume it to be bollocks generally had not made up their mind one way or the other, and wanted the weapons inspectors to be given time to find out. When they were given the bum's rush out of Iraq by the Coalition, that persuaded many of the fence-sitters the skeptics were right.

[jarek]

> So I think it's fair to think that [...] most in the international community believed that Iraq had WMD's.

Hm... "A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." - Jean Chretien, discussing what type of proof Canadian government wanted before assisting in a war with Iraq (which it ultimately did not)

[raintrees]

I remember recently seeing polls that showed a large group of Americans still think (were brainwashed into thinking) that Iraq was largely responsible for 9-11.

Of course a (different?) large majority also believe the Earth is only around 10K years old.

So maybe selective/programmed memory is a more accurate term?