Poppycock. America was founded on the premise of self-government. The founders stated time and again that high ethical and moral standards were the major criteria to judge someone for fitness to hold office.
If the leaders of this country wanted a war for various reasons, they should have stepped up and stated those reasons plainly (instead of relying on bogus ones....ones that even Wolfowitz now admits were merely picked for convenience).
But...if the real reasons for a war are morally bankrupt or will primarily benefit only narrow groups of special interests, then you may have a hard sell.....in which case you can either not have the war, or lie (and since the interests involved in Iraq wanted the war at all costs, they chose the latter course of action).
Should the government publish intelligence gathering activity? Do you think there was no embellishment of English atrocities during the Revolutionary war or during our various other bouts throughout our history? Human nature is no different now than then.
Since time immemorial politicans have manipulated info to serve the needs, as they saw them, of the country. Sometimes they serve not the needs of the country but of the despot, that is true. But that is not the case with American politicians, they are elected and monitored.
You don't get to be a great nation by letting the population govern where they do not posess the proper information to do so, and where providing them with that information would compromise present or future states of national finance and/or security. AISI, it has never been part and parcel of successful governance, and it never will be.
Wolfowitz did not such thing, and the partial quote, taken out of context, from the Vanity Fair article has already been debunked as just that.
Moreover, in order to actually believe that Pres Bush and the rest of the U.S. government lied about the belief that Iraq had WMD, you have to believe that the British, Russian, German and U.S. intelligence agencies all lied about it; that the U.N. lied about Iraq having WMDs when the inspectors left in 1998; that Clinton lied about it when he bombed Iraq in 1998; that Sadam's son-in-law lied about it when he defected (later to stupidly return to Iraq and be killed; that Iraq lied about its own WMD in 1999 after the son-in-law defected and made his statements.
On top of that massive conspiracy, you have to believe that despite not having WMD, Saddam tried his best to make us believe he had WMD by not complying with the Cease Fire agreement or UN Resolutions.
Then you have to believe one of the conspiracy theories for going to war - either that it was for oil (which makes no sense, as oil prices will go down w/ Iraq back on the mkt - moreover why didn't we take the oil in 1991?); or that the war was for haliburton.
Then you have to believe that Iraq did not have time, in the 14 months leading up to the war, to hide or move the WMD. Then you have to believe that we have searched everywhere, when in fact we have only searched 100 out of 1000 potential sites.
In the end, you have to basically believe that everyone is involved in this massive conspiracy but yourself. And, you are right. And boy, are we having a good laugh at your expense.
In the end, even if it turns out that WMD did not exist, that does not mean that the President and U.S. government were not acting on the best available informatoin they had in good faith.
Believe it or not, just b/c you may have disagreed with the war does not make everyone that disagrees with you evil or trying to hide something. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and not a conspiracy.