Or, how about that they successfully convinced the American voter to elect more Republicans in 2002 because ... Saddam. Makes no sense right? But it worked. It was successful enough to convince the opposition party to also support the war.

Let's not forget that Dick Cheney's office leaked a fake story to the New York Times, then cited that story as a reason for going to war... People forget that now, and just how fucked up it is.

IIRC, an apparently poorly considered remark by US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie on the US position on Saddam's dispute with Kuwait was a biggie.

The joke, and maybe the truth, about the Dick Cheney remark that there was "no doubt" Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was that, of course he had such weapons (poison gas) and of course we knew he had them because we "still had the receipts" from when we sold that gas to him. Of course we wanted Saddam to use that gas against Iran.

IMHO it now appears that Dick Cheney, the neo-cons, etc., had an idea about the world and, especially, Iraq:

(1) Saddam was a bad guy. So, push on him, and if he doesn't obey, then invade him. We pushed; Saddam didn't obey; W and Co. invaded him in Gulf War II.

(2) Then part of the idea was W's statement "The Iraqi people are perfectly capable of governing themselves.". So, with such thinking, the US rushed to set up a government -- democratic, constitutional, parliamentary, secular.

Apparently the US expectation was that quickly the US would leave and Iraq would be liberated, free, relatively independent, peaceful, prosperous from the oil, and a buddy of the US.

Then a reality check set in: Oops, nope. Instead we learned what Saddam had warned us about, that we would have one heck of a time holding Iraq together. Saddam, with Stalinist techniques, had held Iraq together, but without Saddam what we did there just let the place come apart.

Apart? Nearly every street thug, gang leader, ambitious politician or cleric, international opportunist, etc. saw the fertile ground and started up. Soon there was the insurgency, i.e., something between just chaos and a civil war.

A big trigger? One of the first things the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, did was to disband Saddam's army. Hmm .... That army had ballpark 7 million men. Let's see: IIRC, Iraq had ballpark 35 million people so 17.5 million males. So, the 7 million men was essentially all the men of military age in the country -- all of them. Hmm.

So, right away Bremer just put all 7 million on the streets, broke. Uh, maybe we might have thought a little about just why Saddam had those 7 million men in his army? Maybe mostly to keep them under his control and off the streets?

In particular, as the army was disbanded, Saddam's huge weapons supplies were left unguarded, then stolen, then used in the insurgency, e.g., as roadside bombs that killed/injured a lot of US soldiers.

The main reason for the insurgency? There are three main populations in Iraq, Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. They all hate each other. At least the Sunnis and Shiites have been at war with each other for over 1000 years.

And now, Iraq is essentially partitioned into Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite areas.

The Shiites have Baghdad and south and east from there to Iran, the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

The Sunnis have the area north and west of Baghdad and extending into northern Syria, and that Sunni area is mostly under the control of fundamentalist, medieval, brutal, angry, hostile, ambitious ISIS.

The Kurds have their areas, mostly on both sides of the border of Turkey.

Iran? Shiite.

Saudi Arabia? Sunni.

Assad in Syria? A branch of Shiite.

The rebels in Syria? Sunni.

The civil war in Syria? Apparently just another chapter of the 1000+ year old Sunni-Shiite war.

What's different since 100 years ago? There used to be a lot of desert and not much money or many people -- few people, poor, separated. Now with the oil money, the desert is still there but there is lots of money and many more people. So, the old Sunni-Shiite war can draw lots more blood.

So, that's what W, Cheney, the neo-cons, Wolfowitz, and Bremer took the US into. They were going to dump Saddam, set up a secular democracy friendly with the the US, and leave, all quickly. Lots of thugs quickly saw the fatal flaws, but W and Co. didn't.

So, the US spent lots of precious US blood and treasure chasing the dreams of Cheney, W, etc.

Lesson? If the US wants to play a role in a swamp, then it needs to understand the reptiles -- snakes, alligators, etc. Else, can get bitten by the snakes and alligators.

But later he DID the almost same thing in Libya, which had the same ideology based motivation to bring down dictatorship and promote (pretend it was done by its OWN PEOPLE) democracy and universal human rights.

That's very dangerous and most people might not notice: Politician seems understand the situation in their talk, but their behavior shows the opposite.

Just imaging: an idiot is silly in most things but just extremely good at one thing: pretend to be very smart and can successfully deceive every body INCLUDING himself. He would have overwhelming advantage over another seems dummy but actually smart guy.

(Recently I've witness Obama behave the same delusional way again in a dialog with Charlie Rose. To most audience, Obama seems reasonable person and gave convincing reasoning but he was actually based on an illusion which happened to be shared by public. )

Even though the lie of Al Qaeda training on Iraqi soil was paper-thin, anti-war politicians and celebrities were shouted down and shunned. It didn’t matter that it made no sense, that Al Qaeda was expressly against the Saddam regime, the momentum was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to trust in the Bush administration’s war effort. The nation was temporarily unified after 9/11.

Years and years later I understood the depravity of his speech and the actions of the "the west" in starting that war. I think it is the only time in my life that I felt truly betrayed, and the realization happened while I was thinking about the topic in a grocery store aisle. My hands felt clammy.

Even more years later my job at a large software company had me extremely close to Powell. Like in the same room with him for long stretches of time and having 1-on-1 conversations. Every fibre in me wanted to say to him, calmly: You told a lie and it killed a lot of innocent people. Their lives matter too.

I didn't say it. I did my job and kept it at that. I don't know to this day if I had a moral obligation to say something, but ultimately I didn't because I knew he didn't care.

So yes, false flags. They only happen when something is inevitable. War is here.

"According to those attending National Security Council meetings in the days after September 11,

  The primary impetus for invading Iraq…was to make an example 
  of [Saddam] Hussein, to create a demonstration model to guide 
  the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive
  weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States."

They really, really wanted to invade Iraq. It never made any sense from the rhetoric alone. Yes there were true believers, yes there were the propagandized officials and newsmen and opinion makers, a mad fervence of sorts. It never made any sense, and yet it was sure to happen, and what for? Why spite ourselves so?

I don't know why, but I do know at the core whatever the reason it was coolly rational, strategic, and not good.

He desired and planned one.

I once spoke to a Republican strategist that told me the greatest thing Ronald Reagan ever did for this country was to get maligned by the left. Because all through his Presidency the left screamed “he’s going to get us into a nuclear war” at the top of their lungs and in the end he ended up signing huge arms reductions. That resonated with people and made the left look really bad.

Even in less successful Presidents like George W. Bush you see this. Bush didn’t lie. He really did think there were WMD in Iraq. Any rational look at the situation makes that very clear (why would he push WMD so hard if he knew they’d never be found and he’d come off looking like an idiot?). Yet rather than push the much more compelling argument that Bush simply didn’t fight the Iraq war competently you have people on the left screaming “Bush lied-People died”

During the First Gulf War the United States provided weapons to both Iran and Iraq. Do you think that was because Reagan couldn't decide who he liked more - Saddam or the Supreme Leader? No, he gave support to both because he loathed them both.

You can be sure Nixon would have never gotten himself killed by going to a tour of Democratic Kampuchea. Nixon was many things, but an idiot wasn't one of them.