Thomas:

The administration really wanted this war, and in order to have it, they launched rationalizations for it. These were stood up and knocked down in order:

1. Weapons of mass destruction were an immediate potential threat to the US. Unfortunately, none were found.

2. Intimate connections with 9-11. This one didn't last very long.

3. Intimate connections with Al-Queada. We liked this one, despite the fact that the differences between Wahhabbi, and the secular socialism and other kinds of Muslim belief as practiced in Iraq made it highly improbable. It didn't really pan out as a basis for starting a war.

4. Weapons of mass destruction could be handed off to terrorists, thus facilitating another 9-11 type incident. This one didn't really pan out either.

5. Well, anyway, he is a bad, bad person and he is causing suffering with his despotic rule and torturing people and murdering people, and his son is even worse.

This is the only one that carried any freight, really, in the actual event. While it is perfectly true, it is difficult to explain as a sole justification for premeditated attack against one country and not others. You will notice that once we started the war, this is the one that got all the air time. "Liberating" Iraq became the phrase du jour. And it was unassailably virtuous, so it shut a lot of people up. There are probably 5,000 Iraqis who might disagree with this virtue idea, but they're dead now.

6. We need to stabilize the region so as to keep feeding our oil habit and making lotsa dough for the top levels of management in the large oil companies.   This one never got particularly articulated by the administration but a lot of folks kinda feel it was the real rationale all along. I'm not party to the decision making process, but it does kind of explain why they really wanted to have a war.

7. The WMD are deeply buried in the huge desert lands in the south. It will take years to track them down. Noone knows where they have been buried, but they must have been.

A