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As lies always could.
There were no WMDs in Iraq.
Sure, but now you can make a video of Saddam giving a tour of a nuclear enrichment facility.
Wearing a tutu. With Dora the explorer.
Most people don't remember this, or weren't alive at the time, but the whole Colin Powell event at the UN was intended to stop the weapons inspectors.
France (remember the Freedom Fries?) wanted to allow the weapons inspectors to keep looking until they could find true evidence of WMDs. The US freaked out because France said it wasn't going to support an invasion of Iraq, at least not yet, because the inspectors hadn't found anything. That meant that the security council wasn't going to approve the resolution, which meant that it was an unauthorized action, and arguably illegal. In fact, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell%27s_presentation_to_the_United_Nations_Security_Council
The whole point of Colin Powell burning all the credibility he'd built up over his entire career was to say "we don't care that the UN weapons inspectors haven't found anything, trust me, the WMDs are there, so we're invading". Whether or not he (or anybody else) truly thought there were WMDs is a bit of a non-issue. What matters was they were a useful pretext for the invasion. Initially, the US probably hoped that the weapons inspectors were going to find some, and that that would make it easy to justify the invasion. The fact that none had been found was a real problem.
In the end, we don't know if it was a lie that the US expected to find WMDs in Iraq. Most of the evidence suggests that they actually thought there were WMDs there. But, the evidence also suggests that they were planning to invade regardless of whether or not there were WMDs.
Great summary 👏 I definitely have some cached thoughts about that era, but didn't remember it that clearly. That WP page with the actual PowerPoint slides is wild.
Sure, but now you'll be able to sway all those people who were on the fence about believing the lie until they see the "evidence"