*Ø* Blogmanac | Grasping concepts
So, after weeks of denial, the White House finally admitted President Bush lied in his January State of the Union Address when he claimed Iraq had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa. The acknowledgment came as a British parliamentary commission questioned the reliability of British intelligence about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

"The report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings."

Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said. "He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could. He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country." Wilkinson retired two months later but says he wrote "numerous memos" questioning the wisdom of using "intelligence information that we knew to be from dubious sources." Source

Meanwhile, in Hinesville, Georgia:

"I thought they [the Iraqis] would be more enthusiastic. I mean, who wouldn't want to live like Americans, to live in democracy, to send your children to school? I'm surprised at how naive the Iraqis are," Mrs Sanchez said. "Who wouldn't want to have freedom? It's hard for me to understand that they don't grasp the concept."

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction counts for considerably less:

"I knew they wouldn't find any. We fooled around and gave them too much stinking time to hide them," said Scott Mortensen, who runs a coffee shop which has become a meeting place for army wives. Source