Upvoted but how could anyone have known whether or not iraq had or was about to have WMDs if they actively resisted and subverted all of the internationally sanctioned inspections? Perhaps they could have attached some probability to each possibility but I have yet to find good evidence that they knew.

Second, in a war with China wouldn’t the elites and their families be just as dead as everyone else after nuclear bombs land on major US cities? I can imagine elites or private companies encouraging political movements toward war or tangential to war but I can’t imagine them wanting war to actually happen.