You're making Expat's point. Neither of these two reasons was used by the Bush administration in its justification for the war back in late 2002.
There's a simple reason for that . . . If the Bush administration had publicly stated what you just posted here, it would have obtained neither public support nor (almost by definition) Congressional approval for the war.
I am truly amazed at how many conservatives have completely bought into the "weapons of mass destruction" nonsense that this administration used for no other reason than to secure public support for the war among the dopey soccer moms who were such strong supporters of Bill Clinton throughout the 1990s.
< If the Bush administration had publicly stated what you just posted here, it would have obtained neither public support nor (almost by definition) Congressional approval for the war.
Absolutely correct, and that's precisely why they chose to emphasize both the WMD and the humanitarian "lraqi liberation" angles. But just because the admin didn't publicly state our true intentions in the region doesn't make those intentions invalid. It's in our national defense interest (to put it mildly) to keep a sharp eye on terrorist enablers in the region and to make sure the oil keeps flowing our way no matter what kind of world crisis we face. Those reasons are good enough for me, and the fact that the admin chose not to use them in its pro-war argument in no way affects my view that our engagement over there is justified.
Now, how we're engaged over there is another matter entirely, and I'm not a fan (to say the least) of our insistence on "winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people" - a nauseatingly overused phrase if there ever was one - at the expense of the lives of our brave fighting men. Way too much PC bullsh/t from my point of view, and a strategy that's bound to fail to boot -- liberated peoples invariably end up despising their liberators (see France), and these particular people wouldn't understand the concept (let alone successfully run) a democratic republic if you shoved it down their throats for decades.
I am truly amazed at how many conservatives have completely bought into the "weapons of mass destruction" nonsense
Although, as I mentioned above, there were more important reasons for taking the war to Iraq than finding Saddam's WMD stockpiles, the fact of the matter remains that he did have them prior to '98. ....so it was far from unreasonable to assume that they were still in his possession. Do you think it's reasonable to assume that a power-mad dictator like Saddam would intentionally destroy his most potent and feared weapons and then not show proof of their destruction (as was demanded by resolution 1441)? I don't. The only reason he'd destroy them would be to save his sorry ass, and the only way his sorry ass would've been saved is if he showed proof of their destruction. But he didn't, which leads me to believe that he didn't destroy them.
So where are they then, you ask? Well, he probably whisked them to either his Ba'athist buddies in Syria or to Libya ......or perhaps to one of the nations on Saddam's payroll that benefitted from the UN's "oil for food" program. Wherever they are, Saddam probably throught that he'd survive this conflict just like he's survived all the others, and that he'd be getting his goodies back in due time.