Bush and his administration have been playing loose with the facts. It would be absurd to take what they have to say at face value given other readily available information including testimony by Iraq's head of nuclear weapons programs (who defected and told the story) and UN weapons inspectors who were quite candid.
I just saw this man on TV last week and he insisted that there had been no cessation in Saddam's weapons build-up. That they were inconvenienced by the UN inspector's but in the last four years had made-up for lost time with chemical and biologicals, that Saddam has dirty bombs and was doggedly persuing long-range nuclear weapons capability.