The leaderships of the US and UK always knew Iraq to have no WMD. At times, they even admitted that they had no real evidence of such weapons. So despite the release of alarmist "dossiers" filled with the lies of exiles and Israeli spies, there were admissions by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld who said that there was "absence of evidence" of WMD, though he added that this did not mean that there was "evidence of absence". The US officials made it clear over and over that it was up to Iraq to prove that it did not have weapons, to prove a negative. They also made it clear that such could not be done and so there was nothing Iraq could have done to avoid being invaded.

Thus, this discussion about "intelligence failures" is in fact a false discussion, as those who are having it always knew that the "intelligence" accumulated and presented was false intelligence, that it was not real evidence at all of a WMD programme. Bush's claims about Saddam's squadrons of pilotless drones ready to cross the ocean to spray U.S. cities with WMD shows the lack of seriousness of U.S. officials and leadership. They knew that they were telling outrageous and absurd lies, yet they persisted in a faith that they could get away with it. They still think that they can get away with it.

Bush and his people always saw this "intelligence" as nothing more than the invention of material to use for a sales pitch to sell a war that he had planned for a long time. When the CIA did not cooperate sufficiently in producing this material, an Office of Special Plans was set up by the Pentagon in order to fabricate the necessary materal. Helping them were Iraqi exiles and Israeli agents, representing two of the most interested parties in provoking this war. British intelligence, directed by the Blair government, also played along in order to show the U.S. that Britain has a valuable role to play in the "special relationship".

None of the principals in any of this saw this as anything other than a cynical farce with a purpose; to conquer Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz was very candid when he described the WMD pretext as a "bureaucratic" pretext to attack Iraq; great power protocol had made this an acceptable issue over which to attack Iraq, even though Iraq had cooperated according to the protocol in order to avoid attack. Thus, false claims had to be made of Iraq in order to claim that Iraq had not taken the necessary measures to avoid attack so that the attack could be carried out. Despite these games, most of the world did not actively accept the U.S. and UK aggression against Iraq.

The other purpose of lying about Iraqi WMD was to sell the war to the American and British people. A campaign to tie Iraq's leadership with al-Qa'eda and to suggest that they masterminded the September 11 2001 attacks helped in this campaign. Lies were required to sell the war in the United States and so these lies were essential; they had to be fabricated on demand by the leadership. That is the real scandal, not a false "intelligence failure".

The role of Israeli agents in this must also be examined. James Woolsey, who served as an Israeli agent in JINSA, was put in charge of CIA by Bill Clinton in 1993. His chicanery, including his falsely accusing the Iraqi leadership of masterminding an assassination attempt on Bush the Elder, helped set Clinton's hard-line policy towards Iraq. Woolsey spent many days and months after September 11 2001 claiming that Iraq had been involved in the attacks. He used his being a former CIA director to gain credibility for such incredible lies. He also repeated old claims of his about the Iraqi leadership ordering the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He accused Iraq of masterminding the October 2001 anthrax scare, despite the fact that the attacks were carried out using anthrax powder; Iraq had no capability to produce such powder. As a CIA director, Woolsey surely knew this, but his point was not to inform; it was to lie, it was to propagandise, it was to do so on behalf of Israel, the state which he served in JINSA. He also serves on the Defense Policy Board, which for most of the Bush presidency was chaired by Richard Perle, the "Prince of Darkness", someone who got away with spying for Israel.

The penetration of U.S. intelligence by foreign agents is a serious business and one that must be addressed by the United States authorities. Unfortunately, Israel is a sacred cow that is even worshipped by some of the more fanatical Protestant fundamentalists. Critics of Israel are branded as anti-Semites by their lobbyists and such claims are taken seriously in the media and in the national discourse. These foreign agents helped concoct lies to fool the American people into a war against Iraq; they knowingly lied. There was no "intelligence failure", unless that is defined as a failure to deal with foreign spies and their access to the top ranks of U.S. power.