The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of a mass destruction - WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The consequence of Mr. Bush's and Blair's historic lie that the reason for invading Iraq was weapons of mass destruction, is that everything is being doubted.
The intelligence failures with respect to Iraq were massive and have damaged our credibility around the world.
The Germans certainly - the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.
Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.
Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.
There was unprecedented elite condemnation of the plans to invade Iraq. Sensible analysts were able to perceive that the enterprise carried significant risks for U.S. interests, however conceived.
I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.
I still believe to some degree that Iraq had WMD.
No opposing quotes found.