[ioulaum]

I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.

The intelligence networks there were weak, and if people were talking about it, they may have assumed wrongly that there was something there.

Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.

[jyounker]

In the run-up to the second Iraq war there were a steady trickle of articles documenting the corruption of the intelligence process.

[Dalewyn]

>Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.

Just to be clear: The people in charge are the CIA, not GWB. GWB was simply the right useful idiot at the right time in the right place.

[mdhb]

That is very literally the opposite of what actually happened.

I don’t know where you are getting your information from but it’s absolutely incorrect.

It was Cheney specifically who was relying on Chalabi whom the CIA had repeatedly dismissed as a fabricator which is what was used as evidence.

[mdhb]

Here’s an actual account from someone in the room that lays out the entire situation. https://youtu.be/5iNrGhmr5p0

[kergonath]

> I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.

There were a lot of indications that it was wrong even at the time, like the inspectors’ reports. We knew about the unreliability of the dodgy dossier and how baseless Khidir Hamza was. The satellite evidence was sketchy and the rest was contradictory. Al-Qaeda was also not there and we also knew that. Let’s not rewrite history: there is no certainty in intelligence, but anyone not in the CIA’s pocket knew it was most likely wrong, a far cry from what you need to legitimately attack a country.