THREE British newspapers decided to commemorate the 2003 Iraq war, when the allies used fake stories about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify their invasion, by printing new fake stories about Iraq’s non-existent WMD.

The Daily Mail’s story, published this month to fit in with the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, had a headline claiming Saddam Hussein “admitted he BLUFFED about having WMDs to deter Iran from invading Iraq, FBI interrogator reveals.”

In 2004, a year after the Iraq invasion began, Saddam was captured by US forces and interrogated by an FBI agent, George Piro, before he was handed over to the Iraqi “interim” occupation government and hanged.

According to the Mail, “During the long interrogation sessions, Piro said he realised that Saddam’s claim to possess WMD was a bluff. He suggested he had lied to unnerve eastern neighbour Iran.”

Back in 2003 the invasion was promoted on the claim that Saddam did have WMD but was pretending he didn’t. Now the Mail claims we invaded Iraq because Saddam did not have WMD — but pretended he did.

If true, it means that Saddam is to blame for the non-existent WMD, not Tony Blair, George W Bush or papers like the Daily Mail that claimed he did have germ bombs and a nuclear weapons programme, because Saddam was “bluffing” that he did have WMD to scare off his regional enemy, Iran.

The only problem is that the story is simply not true. We can look at FBI agent Piro’s notes and see he said no such thing.

The actual record of Piro’s casual conversation with Saddam reads: “Even though Saddam claimed Iraq did not have WMD, the threat from Iran was a major factor as to why he did not allow the return of the UN inspectors.

“Saddam stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

So in 1998, Saddam resisted the UN weapons inspectors because he did not want to look weak in front of Iran, with whom he had fought a vicious eight-year war.

This is not the same as pretending to have WMD. Saddam did not want to look like the UN could push him around lest his neighbour scent weakness, but his government repeatedly — and accurately — denied having WMD.

Saddam then relented in 2002. Piro records Saddam saying he “let the UN inspectors back into Iraq to counter allegations by the British government.”

Piro writes: “Saddam stated this was a very difficult decision to make, but the British government had prepared a report containing inaccurate intelligence. It was this inaccurate intelligence on which the United States was making their decisions.

“Saddam went on to say that even with the inspections ‘it became clear to him … that war was inevitable’.”

So there was no “bluff” about having WMD. It is fake news.

Here are just a few examples of the supposed “Iraqi bluff” on having WMD from the time.

Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri wrote to the UN in November 2002 saying: “Iraq has not developed weapons of mass destruction whether nuclear, chemical or biological, as claimed by evil people.”

Then as late as March 2003 Iraqi information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said: “Iraq has been rid of weapons of mass destruction since spring 1992.”

Al Jazeera asked Iraqi trade minister Muhammad Mahdi Salih about US claims Iraq was building chemical and biological weapons factories in Fallujah in January 2001.

Salih said: “This is like an April fool’s joke, although it is not yet April. This is a lie … This is not true and there are no such projects. Iraq does not produce this kind of material.”

And in February 2003, days before the invasion, Saddam told Labour’s Tony Benn: “There is only one truth, and therefore I tell you as I have said on many occasions before, that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever.”

So either you believe that these denials were all extremely subtle ways of saying Iraq did actually have WMD — or you can see this is fake news.

The notes of Piro’s conversations with Saddam were released in 2009, and one news organisation, Associated Press, then promoted the fake story about Saddam’s bluff based on misinterpreting the notes.

To believe the story back then, you had to imagine that the US government had sat on these notes since 2004, despite the way they shifted the WMD blame back on Saddam, but said nothing about them. You also had to ignore the words in the notes themselves.

Back in 2009, I persuaded a few news organisations to drop this fake tale by pointing out what the notes actually say. So it is sad to see it resurfacing now.

Not only did the Mail revive this false story for the Iraq war anniversary, but the Times also carried a version, claiming Piro “realised that Saddam’s previous claim to have WMD was a bluff designed to ward off his neighbour and bitter enemy, Iran.”

A Daily Mirror columnist also said of Iraqi WMD: “Today, we knew there were none — Saddam had destroyed them in secret while bluffing he still had them.”

It is worth noting that this, like other fake Iraq WMD tales, does not come from a government dossier or an “intelligence services” distortion.

The press is going way beyond any government propaganda to make up their own fake WMD tales — which is what happened in 2002-3 as well.

Back then, the media were happy to carry false WMD stories that were more elaborate and less true even than the government dossiers.

They seem so determined to believe that the “good guys” — our government — can’t be as bad at lying to us as foreign dictators like Saddam, that they will spin a story like this, about Saddam’s supposed “bluff” based on a complete distortion.

Sometimes, faced with journalists like these, you wonder: are they trying to fool us, or themselves?

Follow Solomon Hughes on Twitter at @SolHughesWriter.