The WMD and the Secret Weapons of Mass Destruction

I think we lost something intangible, not just the intelligence community's trust, it's the members of Congress that didn't read the intelligence. It's the people at Colin Powell who knew better, we know from accounts that he was against the time, but still went up and read this script that was full of lies. And I think that did a lot to discredit democracy. If you look at the data around democratic backsliding in the world, it kind of starts right after the Iraq war. The consequences then spread from that because the justification was entirely about weapons of mass destruction or it was maybe about tenuous connection al-Qaeda. Those things are proven wrong, like right away.