Laura Bush says no Iraq WMDs was shocking

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- Former first lady Laura Bush says she and her husband were truly shocked when it turned out Iraq had no arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Mrs. Bush, who writes about the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq in her new memoirs, told Fox News Sunday that the conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons were widely supported by intelligence professionals, and were not some sort of fabrication from the White House.

"That is just so false, and everyone knows that," she said. "If they look at the statements of everyone, the former presidents, the people on Capitol Hill, both sides of the aisle, that was what everyone believed."

The vehement after-the-fact criticism of the decision to invade Iraq over WMDs was disappointing, Mrs. Bush said, but also a fact of life in an atmosphere charged with politics and outright conspiracy theories.

"That's something that we just live with in the United States and know about that, and certainly the people that live in the White House know that," she said.