>>>Not going to decide if that one was lying or to dumb to realize that there were no WMDs hidden
>
>In fairness, the culprit was into sabre-rattling, fostered the impressions that he had doomsday weapons hidden away and acted guilty when inspectors came. The WMD proposition only became credible because he wanted us to be afraid.
>
>The big issue I see is that the (correct) observations by the French and Ruskies (and Germans) were rubbished because they are the French and Ruskies- which was accepted by many as a pretext to ignore their contrary evidence.

Actually, the much bigger lie was that whether he had or didn't have WMD was any of our business in the first place.
He couldn't possibly have threatened the US with them if he had them so it was a manufactured issue from the outset.