>A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

I mean ... there was a joke at a time - how does the USA knows about the WMD - they keep the invoices. Saddam was a product of US and everyone in the know knew exactly what he was having. I am not sure that there was a convincing of the Congress since everyone knew to and they were just playing theater. The neocons pitched successfully invasion, but the US had a strong bipartisan desire for powerbase in the middle east. The rest was show for the public.