"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington DC, during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence," Bush told ABC. Full Story »
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This appears to be based on an ABC News public relations release and disseminated as a favor by Agence France-Presse on behalf of one of its network clients. See the link to one by Reuters, another client, and compare how similar the versions are--as if based on the same news release. You'll essentially get the same brief, non-fact-checked stories by other outlets as a courtesy to ABC News to help build an audience for the interview, where more rigorous questions and answers with fact support should be presented. Wire services also as a courtesy usually allow the originating news outlet to write a greater in-depth story, such as you will find in the link below.
But Bush, speaking to ABC television, refused to say whether he would have ordered the March 2003 invasion if he had known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. “That’s an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can’t do. It’s hard for me to speculate,” said the US president, who took office in January 2001 and hands the keys to the White House to Barack Obama on January 20.
This is what the story is about, really. Bush sidesteps the question. The interviewer should not relent (a la Helen Thomas) and press him with follow-ups around that theme.
This is the business of news as much as it is the news business. Wire services don't have advertisers; they have subscribers like ABC News. Promotions aside, it is often a journalism tradition to give the source of controversy or criticism a chance to present his or her side, letting those quotations--however seemingly spinworthy--speak for themselves. The assumption--and journalists should never make them--is the audience knows better (which they might in this case).