When is a lie not a lie?
When the truth cannot be objectively known. Such is the case with the invasion of Iraq. I am tired of people telling me that “George Bush lied about WMD so he could go get Saddam” for whatever reason. To say that he lied, you must believe that he intentionally said things that he knew to be false. There is no evidence to suggest that. I would suggest that anyone who feels misled by the Bush administration was instead misled by their own beliefs and biases.
In order to say you were misled, and it isn’t your fault, you need to accept that someone deliberately fabricated information and presented it as truth. There is no evidence to suggest that information was fabricated, enhanced, “sexed-up” or otherwise presented falsely. Therefore, the misleading that has happened, has happened in your head.
The case was made that intelligence indicated that there were weapons there. The behavior of Hussein supported that assertion. That the State department had doubts about the veracity of the intelligence does not make statements and decisions derived from that intelligense a lie.
You were not misled. You simply don’t like the fact that the intelligence was wrong. There’s a big difference there.
Our intelligence on the German atomic bomb project was wrong too. Did FDR lie to the American people so they’d support the Manhattan Project?