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"Sorry, this is simply not accurate. I'll just point out three things here: "

* those reasons were not cited from the very beginning. The WMD justification came out in 2001 or 2002, well before the 'humanitarian' justification. But none of that matters, because...

Well, this isn't true, the humanitarian reasons were cited as far back as the January 2002 "Axis of Evil" speech. If you want to know when WMD became an issue, well, you'd have to go back to 1998, when every single Democrat swore up and down in every bit as much detail and "imminence" as Bush that he had them. But Bush first mentioned Iraqi WMD -and- humanitarian abuses at pretty much the same time.

"* there were no WMDs."

Logical fallacy: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense. To this day, I cannot understand on what logical basis liberals simply dismiss that huge convoy that we tracked going into Syria just as the war started, as if it couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it. Or how they explain those thousands and thousands of chemical suits we found.

* Saddam wasn't linked to Al Queda.

In order to believe this, one would have to ignore vast reams of evidence of exactly those links. These links, by the way, were reported extensively by media outlets such as the NY Times, Washington Post and others in the months between October and December of 2001. Piles have been added since then. You are at the proper site to educate yourself on them. Just do some searches.

Qwinn

This could go on for a while..;

When the WMD justification began to flag as efforts to find the weapons met with little success, the humanitarian angle was pushed. Obviously, the Bush government was willing to use any justification necessary to initiate a war with Iraq. And some good has come of that. But the emphasis for various war justifications were in constant flux, leading one to wonder what the precise purpose was at any given time.

As far as I can tell, the so-called links between al-Queda and Iraq amount to very little. There was an early (2001), damning story in the Observer that suggested a strong link, and a later (2003), more comprehensive and knowledgeable account, with the benefit of much more information, in the Observer that tells a very different story. If there are other links, I would be interested and appreciative.

Either we found WMDs or we didn't. Is it your contention that they were all spirited away before the war started? OK, maybe. Maybe Saddam hid nuclear warheads in an remote, undiscovered bunker. But let's use Occam's Razor just for a second, and assume the simplest explanation that there were not massive, lethal stockpiles of WMDs.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Imagine if we used that standard to try criminal cases. "Well, we have no evidence you did anything wrong. But we have no evidence you didn't do anything wrong. So just to be sure, we'll lock you up anyway."