That just isn't true.
He did and no one believed him.
That means outside TERB, the U.K., France, Russia, the PRC, the U.S.A. etc. . . .
Paul Pillar, CIA officer: "The atmosphere in which they were working, in which a policy decision clearly had already been made, in which intelligence was being looked to to support that decision rather to inform decisions yet to be made, was a very important part of the atmosphere."
Or you can read the Downing Street Memo: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo
There's George Tenet who had a meeting with Bush in 2002 before the invasion where he tells him that the reports are being editted in such a way to show incorrect information and the he wanted to be clear that there was no tangible intelligence indicating Iraq had WMDs aside from single-source, unreliable, biased intel. Yes, Tenet had been initially convinced there would be no problem locating information to indicate WMDs in Iraq and even made statements to that fact, but as the weeks pressed on and no evidence was found, he changed his mind. There's a big difference in the two: One was a suspicion based on prior dealings, the other was founded in facts at the time, no doubt after reviewing reports from other agencies.
Shortly before the invasion, the German Chancellor, Gerhardt Schroeder had a meeting with the German Parliament and told them BND/MAD had no intelligence indicating Iraq had WMDs. Putin held several press conferences in the lead up to the war, including one the night before, where he states categorically that he has no evidence of WMDs from FSB. Jacques Chirac made similar statements in the days leading to invasion. Of course, you won't find any coverage on Canada because no one cares what we say on the world stage anymore, but I know for a fact that CSIS and CSE were scrambling to try and find any credible source to support the claim that there were WMDs in Iraq. Had they found any, it would've been presented and Canada would've probably joined the war if only to offer token support.
It was the BND that initially located Curveball, and when he was handed over to the CIA, the BND made it clear they didn't believe his claims. After CIA vetting, the initial intelligence reports said he was only telling interrogators what they wanted to hear.
One of the main reasons why France refused to join the war in Iraq is because they had the most credible source: Naji Sabri, a member of Saddam's cabinet. When asked if Saddam could ramp up production of nuclear weapons and have a working bomb in a few years if he had access to uranium, he said it would take "much longer". He is the ONLY source aside from Curveball to claim any WMDs anywhere, and his claim was a cache of buried nerve gas which French intelligence was unable to verify. That's how intelligence agencies work: single-source unverified information is a rumour, not intelligence. They did eventually find a small cache, one barely worthy of mention that was old and ineffective, but they already supsected Sabri's intelligence wasn't good.
MI6 and GCSE reports in the UK you can find in the Downing Street Memos. Another section of note: "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided.
But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and
his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force." It's important to note that Saddam wasn't supposed to be "completely disarmed", but to be complying with disarmament at the time. Further reading shows intelligence indicated that the stockpiles he had were in the process of being dismantled in accordance with the UN requirements. Post-invasion, we find evidence that such dismantling had been completed with the exception of the single stockpile referred to by Sabri.
Italian intelligence received a report that Saddam was attempting to by uranium from Niger. Oddly enough, it was supposedly from Canada. That was the first indication that these documents were forgeries. Nonetheless, they were turned over to MI6 and CIA. They were deemed forgeries long before the invasion took place and Italian intelligence informed their parliament categorically that there was no evidence of WMDs in Iraq.
Here's a handful of reports about these events from various sources (yes, even FOX news reported some of this):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3440577_page4.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/politics/22intel.HTML
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158228,00.HTML
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2007/07/Wilson-bush-acc/
Claiming everyone believed Iraq had WMDs is like claiming everyone believed Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda. Politicians and their talking heads said so in the leadup, but virtually everyone involved has recanted. I remember watching the Daily Show once where they showed clips of politicians saying Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked, followed by clips where they're saying they never claimed there were links between the two at all. WMDs have been found in Iraq. But that wasn't really widely reported because no one wanted to open the can of worms that was shoddy intelligence reporting and shoddy news reporting in the pre-war months when the intelligence community started speaking out after their intelligence reports were being edited. An interesting movie on the subject, with great cinematography and production values, is "Why We Fight" by BBC and Storyville. Excellent film and shows both sides of the coin, with politicians sticking to their guns and former Pentagon staffers discussing how their reports were edited.
