At the time, everyone believed Saddam had chemical weapons. He had actually used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran. There was no reason at the time to believe he had unilaterally disarmed himself of those chemical weapons, even though that now appears to have been the case. And he did his best to make his neighbors think he sti…
At the time, everyone believed Saddam had chemical weapons. He had actually used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran. There was no reason at the time to believe he had unilaterally disarmed himself of those chemical weapons, even though that now appears to have been the case. And he did his best to make his neighbors think he still had those chemical weapons, for obvious reasons.
WMDs might have been a stupid pretext for invasion, but the pretext itself was not a lie, and it took no convincing since everyone already believed it.
At the time, everyone believed Saddam had chemical weapons. He had actually used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran. There was no reason at the time to believe he had unilaterally disarmed himself of those chemical weapons, even though that now appears to have been the case. And he did his best to make his neighbors think he still had those chemical weapons, for obvious reasons.
WMDs might have been a stupid pretext for invasion, but the pretext itself was not a lie, and it took no convincing since everyone already believed it.
Not everyone. I knew.