"Serious consequences" does not necessarily mean war, Woody. As I recall, there were several questions still unresolved, such as the controversy over whether Saddam had WMDs or not (and it turns out that he did not). The United States jumped the gun and invaded anyway. The Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq even before 9/11. 9/11 gave them an excuse even though they were unable to establish any believable connection between the attacks and Saddam, and when it looked like the back-up excuses like WMDs were going south because the U.N. and other inspection teams were turning up vast quantites of nothing, the U. S. invaded.

That's what I mean by "on their own hook."

Don Firth