“I believe that Bush believed everything he said.”
I also believed in what Bush did back then, and I think that context is lost.
We saw in the 1990s the collapse of the communism and the end of many Asian and Latin American dictatorships and all of those nations by 2003 had emerged as America friendly free-market democracies.
It really seemed like if you remove the despots people around the world would chose the American way of life.
What destroyed that progress was Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. The same year as the Iraq War America began embracing radical social values.
Being Western was no longer about having a washing machine and freedom of speech, it was about embracing values that most of the world considered an anathema.
I saw an interview with the guy would was the Iraqi defense minister on 9-11. He said had to wake Saddam Hussein up and break the news of what had happened. Saddam said, “So what? We had nothing to do with it!” The general said, “But we’re gonna be blamed for it!”
I think Iraq was playing a dangerous game. They wanted the world, and especially Iran to think they had big stockpiles of chemical weapons when they didn’t (Though they did have some.) as a deterrent. So they kept giving the inspectors the runaround trying to look guilty when they were not. It caught up with them because they faked it too well.