If you like a good conspiracy, this one's a doozy

George W. Bush and Tony Blair said Iraq had weapons of mass distruction.

As Robert Kaplin reports, The Iraqi government in the 1990s admitted to U.N. weapons inspectors that it had produced 8,500 liters of anthrax, as well as a few tons of the nerve agent VX.

From the report Hans Blix delivered to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27:

On the question of Iraq's stocks of anthrax, Blix reported there existed "no convincing evidence" they had ever been destroyed. On the contrary, he said, there was "strong evidence" that Iraq had produced even more anthrax than it had declared "and that at least some of this was retained." Blix also reported that Iraq possessed 650 kilograms of "bacterial growth media," enough "to produce . . . 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax."

On the question of VX, Blix reported that his inspection team had "information that conflicts" with Iraqi accounts. The Iraqi government claimed that it had produced VX only as part of a pilot program but that the quality was poor and therefore the agent was never "weaponized." But according to Blix, the inspection team discovered that the Iraqi government had lied. The Iraqi government's own documents showed that the quality and purity of the VX were better than declared and, according to the inspection team, there were "indications that the agent" had indeed been "weaponized."

6,500 "chemical bombs" that Iraq admitted producing still remained unaccounted for. Blix's team calculated the amount of chemical agent in those bombs at 1,000 tons. As Blix reported to the U.N. Security Council, "in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."

German intelligence service reported in 2001 that Hussein was three years away from being able to build three nuclear weapons and that by 2005 Iraq would have a missile with sufficient range to reach Europe.

President Jacques Chirac declared this past February that there were probably weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that "we have to find and destroy them."

Al Gore, declared last September, presumably based on what he had learned as vice president, that Hussein had "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

In a speech delivered at the Pentagon in February 1998, Bill Clinton described what he called Iraq's "offensive biological warfare capability, notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs." Clinton accurately reported the view of U.N. weapons inspectors at the time "that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons."

But only Bush and Blair were lying? Read all about it here.

:: UPDATE ::

Instapundit (as usual) has more to say about it.

:: UPDATE 6/11/2003 ::

More quotes from more apparent liars.