Run-up: the road to Iraq

Since 2004, accounts of how the Bush administration maneuvered the country into war of choice in Iraq with the false claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction have quickly made it on to the best-seller list. It is easy to see why. While in power, Bush and his supporters often seemed indifferent to the charge that they had invaded Iraq without having hard evidence of Saddam’s military capability. As Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy defense secretary, told the press in 2003, “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons for mass destruction as the core reason.”