Bush ordered that when the U.S. assault started and the anticipated stockpiles of WMDs were seized, they must be publicized. Gen. Tommy Franks, his military commander, arranged for specially trained public affairs camera crews to document the discoveries.

Initially it was planned that seized samples of WMDs would be shipped to Kuwait for analysis, but when Kuwait balked at this, the 75th Field Artillery Brigade headquarters at Fort Sill, Okla., was assigned the task.

Gordon and Trainor say in their book that German agents in Baghdad tipped the American military to Saddam's plan for defending his capital. Concentric rings were to be manned by Iraqi units of varying trustworthiness. One of the circles was called the "red line." This was to be the final barrier, manned by Saddam's elite and most reliable troops. U.S. military intelligence reasoned that as American troops reached this defense line, they would be met by poison gas or germ weapons.

But within Saddam's war council, the story was very different. In December 2002, Saddam called his generals together for a surprising announcement: Iraq did not possess WMDs. The generals were stunned. They had long assumed that they could count on a hidden cache of chemical or biological weapons. Iraq had used such weapons in the war with Iran. Saddam had convinced his generals that it was the threat of WMDs that had enabled him to stop the Americans moving on Baghdad after the 1991 war.

According to "Cobra II," Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, told American interrogators after the 2003 war that Saddam's stunning admission to the generals "sent morale plummeting."

The Bush critics can argue that the president was too gullible in accepting the conclusion of his intelligence agencies. But the evidence does not suggest that he knowingly lied to the American public about the existence of WMDs.

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John Hughes is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News. He is a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column. E-mail: hughes@desnews.com