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I'm actually not sure that's the important point here. There was infact sufficient WMD materials to make the claim that, yep, we did in fact find WMDs (links: 550 metric tons of Yellowcake Uranium, thousands of US troops injured from chemical weapon cleanup, weapons captured by ISIS, as referenced in this Reddit comment). Granted, it wasn't a pile of shiny, new, ready to fire gas shells and bombs, but it seems to me it was enough to support a claim. So the question becomes, why did the media narrative become "definitely totally no WMDs whatsoever"? Perhaps the CIA etc could have faked more evidence, but exactly what evidence could they have faked that would plausibly change the narrative? It would certainly have to be at least better than what they actually did find. Or did the Mainstream Media decide in advance on the "definitely totally no WMDs whatsoever" narrative and interpret all evidence in favor of reporting that line.
I also think the lack of enthusiasm for future such adventures are more down to how totally bungled the aftermath was. The administration narrative pre-war was that the Iraqis all couldn't wait to be a peaceful stable Democracy, all we had to do was bump off Saddam's regime. If that had turned out to be actually true and Iraq was a nice stable democracy in 2004, I don't think anybody would care much to what extent the WMDs claim was actually true or reasonable believable at the time. The reluctance now is IMO more due to the fact that Saddam was actually keeping a lid on a bunch of millennia-old religious and tribal beefs that promptly blew up in our faces and we didn't have the slightest clue how to handle, and it took a decade and tremendous amounts of blood and treasure to get things sort of kind of stable. Who wants to repeat that?
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