High-stakes gamble with a toothy smile

The Bush administration made a high-stakes gamble — betting with other people's lives — on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Whether their existence would have been justification for war was never part of the debate.

The gamble didn't pay off. There was neither a whiff of chemical, a spore of biological nor a speck of radiological material within the expanse of the Saddam Hussein empire.

But they still got their war.

As of early 2016, nobody has been charged with a crime.