Iraq WMD Claims: What Did They Know & When?

A declassified Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] report shows that in September 2002, senior officials of the Bush Administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Air Force General Richard Myers, and Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, knew that the Bush Administration's public case for war did not match U.S. intelligence knowledge. [1]

Politico notes that several Iraq war architects are now advising Republican presidential candidates. Then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose military assistant was copied on the JCS report, is one of Jeb Bush’s foreign policy experts. John Bolton is advising Ted Cruz. Elliott Abrams and William Kristol are supporting Marco Rubio.

Senator Dick Durbin, who voted against the war, said on the Senate floor in April 2007 that as a member of the Senate intelligence committee, he had known in 2002 that U.S. intelligence knowledge did not match the Bush Administration's public case for war. “The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn’t believe it,” Durbin said. [2]

Politico notes that the 2002 JCS report was available for inspection by Members of Congress, if they were interested. But as the Washington Post reported in April 2004, as Congress debated the war in the fall of 2002, no more than six senators and a handful of House members read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq WMD. [3]

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References:
1. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530
2. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/apr/27/20070427-124842-1706r/
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/04/27/congressional-oversight-of-intelligence-criticized/a306890e-4684-4ed4-99a0-c8ae7f47feb7/