No. Just to remind you, not everybody thought Iraq had WMDs.

Scott Ritter shoots that excuse to shreds.

(Scott Ritter was one of the UN's top weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Before working for the UN, he served as an officer in the US Marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General H. Norman Schwartzkopf in the first Gulf War. His latest book is Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change.)

I can tell you what the Intelligence communities of the world were saying. And there was 100% agreement that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed by 1998. There was not a single intelligence agency out there saying we have hard data that Saddam retains huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction or that he has reconstituted a meaningful WMD program. Not a single agency! And the reason is that because we had weapons inspectors in place and we could bring facts to table to show that Iraq did not had these weapons, that we had accounted for the vast majority of its weapons and there was no evidence of a reconstituted program.

Now where there was some unanimity that there were concerns over unaccounted-for materials. Not that these unaccounted-for materials presented a weapons threat as they were but that they might be part and parcel of an undeclared weapons program that had been dismantled and was in hiding and could be reconstituted at some later date. This is where the world shared some concern. But again the point I make, is that while you can be concerned, concern does not automatically translate to reality.

Not a single Senator, not a single Congressman was presented with viable intelligence that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction. Therefore you have to ask yourself: What intelligence did they receive? If you’re talking about going to war – and they voted for war – they need to be shown incontrovertible proof that a situation exists that manifests itself as a threat that warrants the use of military force. What I can tell you is that Senators and Congressmen may have believed Saddam had WMD, but that’s faith-based analysis not fact-based analysis. And there is a singular failure across the board for anyone who voted in favor of this war void of any hard, irrefutable evidence. I again re-iterate not a single one of them received such a briefing because frankly speaking such a briefing could not have existed.