This is an example of a lie that has been repeated so many times that it is accepted as the truth. Bush did NOT lie about Saddam Hussein having WMDs. He acted based on numerous intelligence reports, both foreign and domestic, which said that Iraq had continued to seek them. (I realize that not everyone believed it at the time, but plenty of people still did.) People often forget that after Saddam expelled the UN weapons inspectors in 1998, President Clinton authorized a bombing campaign of Iraq to degrade their WMD capabilities. Did Clinton intentionally lie to the public? No, he acted based on the best knowledge he had; because Saddam wouldn't allow the UN inspectors in, it was safe to assume he was still trying to develop WMDs in violation of the peace agreement from the Gulf War. And that was the same assumption that Bush made when he took office. It was only after the invasion that the intelligence and assumption were discovered to be (mostly) inaccurate. But even then,
chemical weapons dating back to the Gulf War period were recently discovered in Iraq. Moreover,
even Bob Woodward declared the claim that "Bush lied" was a myth. Bush did not intentionally mislead anyone, and in order to lie he would have had to know that Iraq didn't still have WMDs but said so anyway, which he did not.
I personally believe that the Bush administration's intent for the Iraq war was always based primarily on establishing democracy in a Muslim nation (although protecting Israel and WMDs were secondary factors). The reasoning went something like this: if Iraq can successfully transition to democracy, then they will make the Middle East more peaceful, reducing the terrorist threat both to America and to Israel, and it will set an example for the rest of the region to become democratic, which will further promote peace. But because the administration knew they couldn't sell a war to the public or the UN based on democratic peace theory, they resorted to the WMD argument instead.
Of course, just because the war was justified doesn't mean it was the right decision, but I digress.
