>>You can make the argument that the intelligence was bad. But remember that many nations (even those who didn't want to join us in 2003) felt he had WMDs.

What do you mean "you can make the argument" - the UK and US investigations both said as early as 2005 that the intelligence was seriously flawed. What other argument could you make?

As for the allies who supported and participated in the earlier Kuwait episode: they were concerned and disbelieving of the WMD pretext to attack again. They came out and said so.

You can't hope to claim that Bush didn't know this, or that he was unaware that after searching and searching and searching, the UNMOVIC inspectors also found nada. As the Butler report said in 2005, that alone ought to have caused a "re-think." Instead, the UN and its inspectors were pilloried, french fries were relabeled Freedom Fries amid calls to boycott products from the cowardly retreat monkies and the "coalition of the willing" was set up to reward small nations prepared to see the Emperor's clothes.

The only substantial ally prepared to drink the kool aid was the UK... and check out the Chilcot report that just came out in the UK, delivering a scathing indictment of the pretexts for invasion. The report was highly critical of Ministers' justification, planning and conduct of the attack. There's no craven attempts to pretend ignorance by government ministers or passing the buck to underlings: of course the ministers are responsible.

IMHO a key finding is that the decision to invade was made based on Mr Blair's presentation of flawed intelligence that was not challenged as it should have been. (my emphasis.) Those who made the claims to Congress/Parliament and to the citizenry to set nations on a path to war, cannot willfully put on blinkers and then claim they did not know.

The report also references secret commitments between Blair and Bush re proceeding regardless in the lead-up to the invasion. But rather than trying to paraphrase the 2.6 million word report, let me quote what Jeremy Corbyn had to say last week:

"I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003.

That apology is owed first of all to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and the country is still living with the devastating consequences of the war and the forces it unleashed.

They have paid the greatest price for the most serious foreign policy calamity of the last 60 years.

The apology is also owed to the families of those soldiers who died in Iraq or who have returned home injured or incapacitated.

They did their duty but it was in a conflict they should never have been sent to.

Finally, it is an apology to the millions of British citizens who feel our democracy was traduced and undermined by the way in which the decision to go to war was taken on the basic of secret ‘I will be with you, whatever’ understandings given to the US president that have now been publicly exposed.

The decision to go to war in Iraq has been a stain on our party and our country, but we now have the chance to work together to build more constructive and mutually beneficial relationships with the rest of the world based on cooperation, peace and international justice."

Finally: some here insist that Obama should know everything his administration does and is a liar if he claims otherwise and/or that even if misled by his administration, he's still responsible because it's his administration. Is that a special expectation just for Obama?