The recordings at the start of this thread are very specific. They don't say "we believe" or "we think" or "we estimate", they as a total say they "know" Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger. Now if they knew this then they must have had proof or extremely strong evidence.

Since then no one has come forward with any of this evidence and no one is claiming this evidence is being kept secret. So they didn't really "know" these things about Iraq, but they said they did know. Powell said to the UN he knew WMD's were there, but they weren't there. He said they had proof there were mobile chemical laboratories in his photos, but they weren't.

More "knowledge":

The difference is, the reason for needing to disarm Iraq, and that is chemical and biological weapons today, and a very robust effort to develop nuclear weapons tomorrow

Rumsfeld said he "knew" exactly where they were, near Tikrit, but they weren't. They said they knew the Iraqi troops were arming themselves with chemical weapons but none existed. They said they knew how many tons of chemical weapons and Anthrax there were, but none of these existed.

not believed, knew:

Rumsfeld: Well, we know that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons. And we know he has an active program for the development of nuclear weapons.

The weapons inspectors and Scott Ritter said they may not exist, no one could be sure. Nonsense says Bush, we have precise intelligence on this. Evidence too sensitive to show the weapons inspectors. None of these things existed. Not a sausage.

Here's some more assertions about an imminent threat:

"Q Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these -- because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true? "MR. FLEISCHER: Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all. We said what we said because we meant it."

So what do you call it when they said they knew something and there is no evidence it is true, and an abundance of evidence now it is not true? They didn't really know it, they may have believed it. Was there sufficient evidence to justify such a belief? Perhaps. They didn't say they believed it, in which case people would have questioned how strong the evidence was for immediate action. Because the evidence was said to be so overwhelming most went along with it.

Here's another:

Q Ari, the President has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth. MR. FLEISCHER: Yes.

They said they knew these things, and they didn't know. That's pretty close to a lie and it's not surprising people call it such. Drezner, a former consultant to Cheney agreed the Administration said the threat was imminent but cuts them some slack in others ways. You might want to read that:

"Bush lied." -- What was in dispute was rhetoric and not intent -- so I ignored all the various hypotheses both authors proffered about why the administration did what it did. "We only went to war because Bush said there was an imminent threat." That's patently false, but whether the Bush administration made other arguments justifying the use of force is irrelevant to the question of whether an imminent threat argument was used. "The administration implied there was an imminent threat." To argue is to use the active voice to make a positive argument. To hint at something, or fail to correct misperceptions made by others, is not quite the same thing.