There's a great idea. We don't need a President, a National Security Advisor or a State Department. We can just send Jay Leno out on the street with a microphone and base our foreign policy on the idiots he interviews.
Go check out some of the news stories leading up to and during the early part of the war.
Sorry, correction: That would be idiots on the street and the hand-wringing, left-leaning media setting our foreign policy. But, sarcasm aside, and despite their deficiencies and bias, the media covered a number of considerations regarding the use of force in Iraq. WMD's was one. Saddam's habitual aggression towards his neighbors was another. Saddam's militaristic tendencies driving an arms race in the Middle East (including desires and actual programs in Iran and among other neighbors to aquire WMD's) was one I don't remember being mentioned, but should have been. Saddam's human rights abuses were mentioned, however. His connections to terrorism were discussed (financing and rewarding of suicide bombers in Israel, Abu Nidal, Salman Pak, etc). The financial cost of maintaing "containment" was not discussed much explicity (again I think it should have been) but the political costs were discussed in the press, as where the human costs (threats to U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East, the human cost of sanctions on Iraqis, etc).
I could go on like this for a couple more paragraphs. I haven't even gotten into political considerations regarding "transformation" of the Middle East; e.g. the arguments of "neo-cons" like Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams that support for, or sufference of, dictators and authoritarian regimes in the interest of maintaining "stability" has proven (and always was) a false security; that the "status quo" in the Middle East is intolerably perilous, and only promises to become worse; that we are dangerously overdue for fundamental reorientations in policy that should have been undertaken at the end of the cold war, and that Iraq provided an ideal opportunity to effect these changes.
Anyway, most of these matters were discussed, and many others besides. I honestly can't imagine where (aside from the cynical and hypocritical anti-war left) you get the notion that it was all and only WMD. I have to ask if you were reading the news, or listening to Dubya's speeches.
As my moderate friends started pointing out after no WMD's were used, the stated objectives started changing after the war was initated. Have you also forgotten the speeches at the UN about WMD's being the reason?
Uh, huh. "Moderate" friends. Riiiiiiiiiight.
The stated objective, in terms of the legal basis for the war, was and is perfectly clear: To finally compel Saddam's compliance with the terms of surrender he agreed to twelve years ago, and the U.N. resolutions that codified them.
IT WAS AN OBJECTIVE FACT, as certified by the U.N. inspectors themselves, and agreed by all members of the security council, that Saddam was not complying with resolution 1441. (In, for example, the certification that Iraq's December disclosure of it's WMD programs and other prohibited weapon programs, required of them by resolution 1441, and required to be complete and accurate, was in fact INACCURATE and INCOMPLETE, as has been PROVEN on multiple points since).
Note that compliance did not entail Saddam secretely destroying (or transferring!) his WMD. It required that Saddam document the destruction, ideally by letting inspectors witness it, AND THAT HE FULLY DISCLOSE AND DISMANTLE THE WMD PROGRAMS.
Saddam never did ANY of this, and this was the formal and legal basis for the war. (Sorry to shout, btw, but it sadly seems to be necessary.)
In addtion there were many other considerations, as outlined above and ennumerated by other freepers. These reasons do not stand against each other, and it is patently nonsensical to take the position that they do. It was indeed the consilience of these multiple considerations that made the case for the use of force in Iraq particularly compeling. Whatever you or your "moderate" friends may think, it would be most unusual, to the point of being almost bizarre, for a policy of such scope and moment to have one and only one justification.
They're Republicans. You have a better word?