I feel like there was an attempt at a narrative what with the bin Laden thing and the uranium thing and the "we don't want to have a smoking gun be a mushroom cloud" allusion to a hypothetical Iraqi first strike. Was it all disprovable lies? Sure, but it wasn't this atemporal "we gotta attack them to prevent the counterattack that would result from our attacking them to prevent the counterattack" ourobouros propaganda.