I don't disagree with what you say here, but the point bears making that Bush himself did not necessarily lie. The Book Fiasco by Thomas Ricks lays out what happened with pretty solid sourcing. The intelligence community collected information about WMD's in Iraq, but because we had no boots on the ground in country, our intelligence consisted entirely of statements by Iraqi expats with suspect motives. The intelligence analysts on the ground had strong suspicions about the credibility of those statements. But the administration wanted justification for a war, so its intelligence liasons essentially told the intelligence brass to supply them with one. Hence, as the intelligence information moved upstairs, each iteration of it was further and further denuded of the analysts' suspicions about the credibility of the information, to the point where the top level report provided to the administration (and by the administration to Congress) essentially presented the information uncritically, as fact.
While the administration sent a clear message to the intelligence community that it wanted justification for war, it is unclear and unknown the extent to which Bush himself was privy to the credibility problems with the sources. He may well have been intentionally insulated from it. Clearly the administration was guilty of dishonesty, but the individual knowledge of Bush is unclear. Bush was never really the President anyway. He was a stooge for others. I think most people understand that by now if they didn't then.
I think I laid it out pretty carefully, and I did not include any suggestion of a quote from George Bush saying "I order you to lie that Saddam has WMD."
I think we are right to hold Bush responsible for the actions of his administration he permitted.
Allowing him to not be responsible for his administration is like letting a drunk driver say, "I didn't commit a crime when I killed that family, I was unconscious".
Ultimately it was his choice who to appoint, who to let do what - but not I don't lay it all at his feet by any means. But a lot belongs there for him to back that team.
He decided he wanted war. He wasn't honest about his commitment to war, and he wasn't honest about his reasons for war. When an ad agency working for a cigarette company puts the ad out that seduces people to smoke, and leaves out (if allowed) the harmful effects, they aren't 'telling the truth', even if they aren't 'lying'. He appointed almost exactly the same people to power, who had shortly before the election signed a letter to Clinton encouraging him to go to war with Saddam.
I agree with your boundaries on the 'Bush lied' issue, and I think I included them in my post, but it's also not right to go too far in protecting him.
Another item, you say 'we didn't have boots on the ground' as if the administration was making a good faith effort to get the truth, it was an honest limitation.
There are many reasons why that's wrong, but let's take one - we had international inspectors ON THE GROUND, under Hans Blix, who were making good progress on a credible investigation on the issue, who appeared increasingly likely to - and would have - reported there were no WMD, and the administration's response wasn't to welcome the truth with a sigh of relief for peace, it was to view the team as a threat to its war agenda, IIRC to accelerate the war schedule to prevent them from finishing and start the war before the team killed its selected justification for war - and not only that, it launched an attack operation to discredit Hans Blix.
Now that's a far cry from the 'innocent mistake' tone of your version.
You mention 'Iraqi experts'; technically there were multiple people, but you leave out a couple things, one that the best experts we had said there were NOT WMD, like Saddam's son-in-law *who had been in charge of the program* and defected and told us that, and nearly tne entire case for WMD was Curveball, who I said was:
"one man, who they had never met or talked to or knew the identity of, using the information he had supplied German intelligence because he knew it would help him get asylum he wanted when only one in 25 Iraqis trying for asylum in German were getting it, a source German intelligence had told the US was not reliable."
THAT'S the man Colin Powell described as 'not allegations, but facts from solid intelligence'.
I agree with you and will put it more strongly, that Bush likely was 'institutionally insulated' from the dishonest campaign - but the thing you left out there was how much that was Bush's choice. If you have a Reagan say he wants the Contras supported, and his Vice President former head of the CIA says he'll get it done, then the fact Reagan is 'institutionally insulated' doesn't absolve him of guilt for the law-breaking he ordered, just because it was indirect.
What I'm doing it describing the wrongs that were done in contrast to the right-wing 'it was an honest mistake' myth - a correction you largely agree with - including the nuances between 'Bush knew there were no WMD and knowingly lied', which I don't think the evidence supports, and the fact of the lies that did happen.
I think my post accounted for the point you were making. It sounds like you were concerned about the excessive claim against Bush that I did not make.
But I also think you were understating the wrong in areas, while we mostly agree.
For what it's worth, I've defended Bush more than most on the left on the larger issue that the left did not have a good plan for Saddam on their own. That there was a case to be made for wanting to act against Saddam - while criticizing Republicans for everything from a terribly corrupt and incompetent management of the war, to the lies pushing it, to their earlier backing of Saddam. Democrats were vulnerable to legitimate criticism for the potential decades coming of Saddam family dictatorship.
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