I really think the administration thought they were going to find stuff.
I do think Blair & Bush "massaged" the intel, but I think they thought of it as a white lie. Saddam was sneaky, and the only way to catch him red handed was to go in, so they made the intel seem more sure, when really they were just going on Iraqi dissident, and gut reactions.
Clinton, Albright, Kerry you name it were snookered by Saddam as well. They refused to act on their beliefs that he was making weapons, and they left President Bush to hold the bag.
A conspiracy theorist might even say that Clinton knew Saddam didn't have anything, but dumped bad info on Bush to trick him into over-reaching.
not exactly sure if I would use the word "massaged"...i just plain think that there some dead wrong assumptions made about WMDs in Iraq. The NIE report sounds quite convincing and I'm sure that people in the administration wouldn't have pushed the WMD issue so hard before the war if they didn't really believe there was any there. I think this is more of a massive intelligence failure. What ticks me off is those that say that they should have pushed the human rights issue more before invading...those same people would have come back with the arguement that human rights are abuse all over the world.
We've liberated a country and drained a part of the terrorist supporting swamp, while at the same time removing a WMD threat that was uncertain because it was hidden behind the veil of dictatorship's secrecy. that threat was undoubtably real over the long-term whether or not there were active agents in-country on march 23 2003.
The US isnt holding any 'bag'. We've got 4 aces. (Okay, only 3 still missing Saddam himself).