or did you forget about that? He attacked Iraq early in his administration when it came out that Saddam was behind an attempt to assassinate Bush (41). He attacked Iraq again in 1998 when the weapons inspectors were kicked out.

Are you being deliberately dense, or can you realize that presidents and political leaders depend on the Intelligence Community (IC) for the information necessary to make decisions. If the information they receive from the IC is flawed, then they aren't lying or being deceptive when they act on it.

The IC works on consensus, which is both good and bad. Consensus can be bad if it leads to group-think. During the Cold War, IC group-think prevented them from seeing the impending collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Before the 91 Gulf War, IC group-think convinced them that Saddam didn't have any serious WMD programs despite his repeated use of chemical weapons against Iran. After inspectors went into Iraq in 1992 and found evidence of several WMD programs, the group-think was that he had these programs and was continuing to work on them. Especially after the inspectors were kicked out, the consensus was that Saddam was actively working on WMDs. Given his history, it was a reasonable conclusion.

Bush asked his IC and was assured by then CIA Director George Tenet that WMDs were "a slam dunk." Given Saddam's known support for terrorism, Bush made the decision to remove Saddam from power. It was a reasonable decision based on the information available at the time, IMO.