No matter what the claims by witnesses and the conclusions reached by Commons Enquiries and Select Committees about Saddam's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, it is beyond doubt that the world was told he had them ready and waiting to attack the West.

The question is were Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, Blair, Straw and Hoon lying when they made their repeated claims over many months about the threat from Iraq's Nuclear Chemical and Biological weapons?

Cast your vote NOW!

I don't know whether they were lying or not, and I doubt I will ever know unless one of them confesses in The Mirror. Deniability is their watchword.
The are bang to rights on distorting the intelligence reports - it definitely happened, the question is where and by whom and for what reason?

I'd like to say they weren't lying but I'm unsure.
In any case, I feel that Saddam is better out of power than in power.

*Deleted by Dabouncer*

*Deleted by DaBouncer*

No, they were not lying, that vicious thug was a threat to the world as we all know and giving him even more time after all those years when he was let off the hook, would have been a big mistake.

IMO there were no lies. Every politician constantly keeps his/her eye on 2 things: the electorate and history.

Everybody thought maggie lied about the Belgrano but history has partially justified her actions. No politician wants to go down in history as having lied to the electorate.

I'll now add some my thoughts to this:

Although I believe that Saddam did have WMD I am not sure Iraq was as much as a threat as people were led to believe.

It is imperative that these weapons are found as at the moment Blair is under great scrutiny and pressure to justify Iraq and are relying solely on WMD to be found to get them out of there predicament.

If America loses Blair as its allie in the next campaign, will the other coalition countries follow suit? I think so, once bitten twice shy!

It's much to early to write the history of this war yet, as to many things still to be analysed.

I don't like Alister Cambell and hope he gets sacked. These behind the scenes man who pull the strings make far too many decisions and are accountable to nobody except the prime minister.

Cambell seems to be lying his head off. Why won't the committee be allowed to see the original dosier, as opposed to the one that was released? It seems to me that this is because certain things were elaborated and changed to make Iraq seem more of a threat.

For this military campaign to be a justified success WMD will need to be found before it can be seen as such, otherwise it will limit America going to war with international approval, when the next war roles around.

A common thought is that WMD could be planted if none are found. No , I honestly do not think so.

The CIA was supposedly where the WMD info came from and Bush has sent the very same man to Iraq to take over the search for WMD.

In my opinion Bush has done this to make a scapegoat and sacraficial lamb to hand over to the worlds media if none are found. I think Bush himself believes that none are going to be found which is why he arranged to send this very man.

as Hans Blix said:
[how can there be] 100% certainty about the existence of WMD and 0% certainty about their location.

WMD was the excuse required to deliver enough of a multilateral mandate. Britain mucked in because this was a good chance for some low risk,high visibility projection of miltary force - lots of navy, airborne and army action.

Other countries were bribed, cajoled and threatened - or like the spanish and australians - begging to get in for some international prestige.

Once the Americans had the agreement of what it needed, it gave up on the UN, easily scapegoating France who, let us remember, never vetoed anything.

This was essentially a window of opportunity for the US to add Iraq to the list of 120 or so nations that currenty enjoy US military visitors. And Open up virtually untapped, gigantic oilfields to the free market - possibly even outside opec.

The invasion had to happen before the heat of the summer, and had to be as quick and devastating as possible.

Everything that happened diplomatically in the period from September to March was predicated on that fact - without it being explicitly mentioned, other than pundits.

WMD was a good card to play, but backfired as a combination of Iraqi incooperation and a real lack of wepaons failed to reveal any smoking guns. We went in anyway because Iraq was not disarming itself of marginally illegal tactical missiles quickly enough (with quarter of a million unfriendly troops on the borders...)

As has been posted, anyone of responsibilty will have 100% deniability on any massaging of fact required to egg parliament into 'approving' the war, but the fact that it happened is undeniable - the scare story was just that.

Iraq? A loose cannon and oppressive regime? Certainly. A threat to the UK requiring HM forces in defence of the realm? mmmmm

And has been exhaustively, repeatedly, pointed out elsewhere, why is Iraq so special, amongst all the other unpleasant WMD weilding regimes out there?

I'd like to say they weren't lying but I'm unsure.
In any case, I feel that Saddam is better out of power than in power.

They were lying.

they were so lying... but at least they got rid of Saddam.

There's a good article by Christopher Hitchens about the matter of Iraq's WMD capability.

http://www.slate.com/id/2162157/

The most significant piece of the article read thus:-

Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

The entire record of UNSCOM until that date had shown a determination on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship to build dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, to refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed without coercion, to conceal chemical and biological deposits, and to search the black market for materiel that would breach the sanctions. The defection of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, the Kamel brothers, had shown that this policy was even more systematic than had even been suspected. Moreover, Iraq did not account for—has in fact never accounted for—a number of the items that it admitted under pressure to possessing after the Kamel defection. We still do not know what happened to this weaponry. This is partly why all Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD. Would it have been preferable to accept Saddam Hussein's word for it and to allow him the chance to re-equip once more once the sanctions had further decayed?

they were so lying... but at least they got rid of Saddam.

But at the time, they made explicitly clear that getting rid of Saddam was not, and could not be, sufficient grounds for invasion. They were at great pains to point out that they could only justify their actions because he had weapons of mass destruction at his disposal.

At the time, I thought getting rid of Saddam was a valuable end in itself, but the people who authorised the invasion said themselves that it was not. So neither you, nor they, can use that as a defence for them lying.

But at the time, they made explicitly clear that getting rid of Saddam was not, and could not be, sufficient grounds for invasion. They were at great pains to point out that they could only justify their actions because he had weapons of mass destruction at his disposal.

At the time, I thought getting rid of Saddam was a valuable end in itself, but the people who authorised the invasion said themselves that it was not. So neither you, nor they, can use that as a defence for them lying.

I wasn't using it as a defence for them lying.

But just because they lied isn't an excuse to ignore the fact that they did some good too.

I wasn't using it as a defence for them lying.

But just because they lied isn't an excuse to ignore the fact that they did some good too.

In my eyes, they did; in their own eyes they did not.

At the very least Blair misled parliament and the nation. This is clear by his change of position on why Iraq was attacked.

We went to war on the remit of Saddam not complying with the UN directive ordering him to disarm and destroy his WMD's .. it’s clear now he never had any WMD's and so the reason for going to war was wrong. The irrefutable evidence has now been shown as complete rubbish. I mean come on, 45 minutes from doom. Who do you think leaked that the to press?

the reason they gave wasn't valid

but there was still a good reason. the fact they lied doesn't change the good reason. it just means they gave the wrong reason. mistakes happen. the right thing got done in the end. that's my story, i'm sticking to it lol.

:P