I don't believe it was the "primary" reason for the invasion. Iraq violating the "fly over zone" was not enough - been doing it for years. The WMD's is why I supported the Iraq war as did most of the World. Chemical weapons were known to exist, used, and found. Plus, everyone knew of Saddam's ambition to build nukes.
I now think we wasted too much of our Troops lives and limbs when we could have contained Saddam like we did Kaddafi. I believe the clandestine services and DOD spec-ops could have dealt with Saddam's behavior/operations. Again, specific targeting. Kaddafi punked out. With enough effort so would have Saddam - remember he was found in a hole in the ground.
Most of your comment I tend to agree with, although some I haven't heard of. Apparently, you are more informed or buying into hearsay, supposition, personal opinion, or conspiracy. I mean the above as no slight. Please don't bother to explain further. You have made some of your points with fact and I prefer not to Google everything on record. Thanks for the info.
I always figured the real reasons we went into Iraq, with intent to stick around, were:
Strategic presence in the region (bracket Iran.)
Taking out Saddam AND his military meant that we did not have to try to take out Libya or (even more importantly) Iran and Pakistan. Basically, a message had to be sent, and due to Iraq’s location, and weakness, it was the best choice. You mention containing Kaddafi - but most of that was accomplished by swiftly crushing Saddam’s army and pulling Saddam out of his spider hole.
We (and most other countries) really did think Saddam’s WMD capacity was dangerous, and the only way to actually neutralize it without causing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties was to go in and hunt it down methodically, without the interference of counter efforts by the Iraqis.