Interesting, but I disagree with you about the reason we went. I don’t think it was to show we were tough or to make a point. I believe there were a lot of valid reasons to go which have been hashed and rehashed in posts like this ad infinitum. I won’t go into them in this post.
I do want to elaborate on your point about the American people and their backlash which produced the radical 1974 congress and also allowed Obama to come to power in 2008. Perhaps that is the Bush’s administrations biggest failure. That is to say, to not pin so much on the WMDs (there were a number of other valid reasons) and also to better prepare the American people for the task at hand. The other huge mistake was Bremmer and his de-Bathification of the whole country. When we de-Nazified Germany after WWII we did not simply dismiss all former Nazis from power. We got rid of the worst, but the beauracrats underneath we kept to keep a somewhat functioning country. This should have been done in Iraq, especially the military part. We let that Army disintigrate and that is why we have a lot of the problems in the Iraqi army even today.
I always thought Tony Blair made the better case for war based on humanitarian reasons.
I do think we should have used more of Saddam’s government to keep things functioning and we should have imposed someone of our choosing at the top.
I’m reminded of a recording of a radio broadcast to all of Germany at the end of WWII. Something along the lines of “We aren’t here to be your friends or rebuild your nation. We’re here to impose civil society because you started this war and lost.”