So we've laid out the differences in opinions, now let's get the facts straight.
Originally Posted by antarius
There were more reasons than specified to go to war. You don't go out and mention every single reason why you are going to remove a regime, you state the most dangerous reasons and make those public. President Bush has stated time and time again that we need to Reshape the Middleeast. He has stated time and time again that Saddam Hussein was a supporter of Terrorism - both before and after the Iraq war; and he stated that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
WMD was
THE reason stated for going to war. It was what was brought to the UN's attention, it was what was brought to the public's attention. It's not like things like abuses of the oil-for-fuel program or Saddam paying suicide bombers were only on a need-to-know basis as you seem to be implying. In fact as you've already stated they were known. The difference is that while they were known they were not used as justification; unless of course they were somehow implied through omission, which is a pretty stupid way to imply something.
Originally Posted by antarius
You act as if President Bush lied about the WMD. President Bush went off the same intelligence that the United States had been using for the past 12 years. The same information that caused Bill Clinton to bomb chemical plants in Iraq. The bottom line was the intelligence was wrong. It wasn't that President Bush lied about the intelligence, it was that it was flat out wrong. The director of the CIA resigned because of it, we reformed the CIA and added more funding to the intelligence community so that sort of thing doesn't happen again, and they admitted their fault (the CIA).
I haven't said Bush lied, I said he used one reason for going to war, that reason was met with much skepticism at the time, and that reason has turned out to be wrong.
Blaming it only faulty intelligence is a cop out in my book. A crutch. The only way the blame could be placed squarely on the CIA is if anyone and everyone, when presented with that information, would have done the same thing as Bush.