To those who actually were in the intelligence community during the period in question, “Bush Lied” is a shortened version of: “Bush really wanted to get Saddam because Saddam had tried to kill his father, and everyone fell for intelligence generated by an Iranian agent provocateur who was able to also fool the Israeli intelligence services, too, so that it looked like the WMD intelligence came from two sources when, in fact, it was only from one phony source.”
The point is that GWB really, really wanted to get Saddam and he used 9/11 and the WMD flap as an excuse to do it. What made it a disaster was that there was no effective plan of what to do after we won. “Let them loot!” is not a useful occupation strategy. Ambassador Crocker was an idiot. The de-Baathification debacle returned the country to tribal anarchy. The Marines in Al Anbar province were able to co-opt the tribal structure into a more cohesive government, but central government screwed that up and it has never recovered.
So Bush lied, some of my friends died, is easier way to sum up the Iraq invasion.
George W. Bush - 02/16/2001 United States airplanes attack Iraqi radar sites to enforce a "no-fly zone." Bush calls the military action a âroutine mission". February 16, 2001
Although we had right to run these "routine missions", Clinton hadn't been. IMHO