“On August 26 [2002], Vice President [Dick] Cheney had given a speech that [Army Major General James ‘Spider’] Marks believed must have been cleared by U.S. intelligence. ‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,’ Cheney said. ‘There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.’ The rhetoric was very strong, and Marks took it as an article of faith that the intelligence behind it was equally strong. Saddam had WMD.’ …But in studying the Iraq intelligence, Marks found that… They had almost no on-the-ground intelligence, the sort they’d need to find the WMD they were sure Saddam was hiding.”
– Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Pages 92-93