You're definitely repeating some of the misinformation in the form of reductionism. The situation with WMDs in Iraq was definitely wrong, but doesn't rise to lies. Two different countries were saying that they suspected these weapons were in Iraq, where Al Qaeda was heavily present, and often protected. The cherry on top was that in the 1980s Saddam had not only manufactured chemical weapons but he used them as well. Saddam refused to allow UN investigators in, and thus we had the Iraq war. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

One of the things I also remember from this time period was about why 9/11 happened even though some individual agencies had bits of information. It was discovered these agencies didn't share information so as to protect it. FISA and The Dept of Homeland Security are direct reflections of their own internal criticism.

I was raised never to trust the government. I served in Afghanistan under two different presidents and I definitely get what it's like to witness lies and misinformation spewed across TV stations while your reality on the ground is very different. These days I have a healthy distrust for government still, however, I expect to see reports and trajectories change when those institutions mess things up. This is what composes "trust" for me now. That's the best I feel that I can expect from any large bureaucratic organization government or otherwise.