Well, thanks to @besttrousers for dropping the Iraq WMD grenade in my lap - you shall pay, Matt - but one thing to remember is that Saddam could have screwed over Bush and Blair by complying with UN demands at the last minute. In fact, U.S. was worried he'd do that. /1

Saddam's own generals later were debriefed and said stuff like "Well, my unit didn't have them, but the units near me did." When you're so good at this your own generals think they exist, you can imagine that foreign intel agencies aren't betting on the under. /2

No major intel agency anywhere dissented from the basic view that Iraq was hiding WMD. Weapons inspectors wanted more time to prove a negative, that Iraq *didn't* have them. Duelfer later found none, but intent to preserve the WMD programs for quick restart. /3

You can argue that invading Iraq was a bad idea, badly executed, or badly premised on WMD as the major reason. But "experts were stupid and everyone knew there was no WMD" is just 20-years-later retconning for a war that went bad for a lot of reasons. /4x

Absolutely not. A lot of us doubted it at the time. Plenty of evidence that experts were mixed on it, yet politicians went with what they wanted to do regardless.

"A lot of people had doubts," while true, is VERY different from, "Everyone knew there was no WMD." I believe his is more a defense of the analyst community that had to make a tough call than of the policymakers who took that data and yelled, "WAR!" from the mountain-tops.

Williamson blocks me, but without even seeing it, I can guess what her comment sounded like. And you are correct, analysts had to make a hard call about an adversary who was trying to prevent the world from thinking he *didn't* have WMD.