putin 7d chess
What can you do when Putin plays 7-dimensional chess?
US invaded Iraq in 2003 because Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction". Except Iraq didn't have them. Once the lie had served its purpose the US admitted as much, but dodged responsibility by redacting the story: Iraq had been pretending it had WMDs! No way was the US smearing and invading the country based on that smear actually America's fault.

Well neither is falsely accusing Russia of getting its Manchurian candidate into the White House. Because while KGB doesn't actually have tons of blackmail material on him Russia pretended it did. Take it over Wall Street Journal:
There is a third possibility, namely that the dossier was part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot targeting both parties and America's political process. This is what seems most likely to me, having spent much of my 30-year government career, including with the CIA, observing Soviet and then Russian intelligence operations. If there is one thing I have learned, it's that Vladimir Putin continues in the Soviet tradition of using disinformation and espionage as foreign-policy tools.

...

The pattern of such Russian operations is to sprinkle false information, designed to degrade the enemy's social and political infrastructure, among true statements that enhance the veracity of the overall report.
Oh those Russkies! While they actually did not do the things the Hillary dossier says, they wanted Americans to believe they did, so of course insane Russiagaters can not be blamed for advancing the lie Russia was actually secretly controlling their President.

So we've gone from Russia being responsible for Russiagate to Russia being responsible for Americans falsely believing Russia was responsible for Russiagate.

Also it's now Russia's fault Democrats needlessly polarized American society by advancing feeble-minded smears from the Clinton dossier.

Oh well, whatever keeps you from having to take responsibility I guess.

Nice round-about way of admitting the Steele Dossier was idiotic and that advancing it hurt Democrats, however.