Things had been building up for weeks at this point. It had been fairly obvious that Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq for at least 18 months, but it took some time to find of justification for it. The legal figleaf that they eventually settled on was the supposed possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (or WMD’s, because that’s a mouthful) by Iraq.
Never mind that UN weapons inspectors had been in Iraq as recently as January and found nothing. Never mind that Secretary of State Colin Powell had burned up what little credibility he had left in a farcical presentation to the United Nations on February 5, based on what may generously be called faulty intelligence – he later claimed that he had not lied, in the sense that he believed the information he had been given was true, but the damage was done. Nonetheless, the war would go ahead, although its rationale would shift as the months unfolded, and a grand total of zero Weapons of Mass Destruction were found.
