Since there are so few concrete facts and little knowledge of EXACTLY what the administration was actually thinking, almost every side of the argument can be made convincingly. Your libs will argue it was all for oil, and your conservatives will say it truly was for WMD's and was completely justified.
That being said, I don't really believe it was for either...sure I'm sure the thought of easier access to more oil lit up some eyes of those concerned, and I'm also sure there was at least some real worry of the weapons Iraq had. It seems more likely, though, that the WMD argument was played up (as all dissenting info was ignored) and even the speech Colin Powell gave to the UN describing their program was weak, at best. So what was it, really? Who knows. I personally believe for Bush, it had a lot to do with Iraq's attempt to kill his father. Rumsfield was also all for the war (reportedly, after 9/11, he was quoted as telling the CIA to find everything possible to link Saddam to the attack), but I'm not really sure what his end goal was. Perhaps the administration just wanted a national enemy, someone they knew they could crush. Perhaps they just wanted to create an ally in the volatile area. Perhaps they just loved war (ok, probably not). The sad thing is, we'll probably never know 100%. And that's sad. So many people died and we're not even sure the exact reason. Hopefully, that never happens again.
(As for the "there really were WMD's there"...thats a stretch. To my knowledge, all the shells they found were dated to before the first Iraq war and before they were required to destroy weapons. Even though they still found some shells, (again, from what I can remember) they were hardly in useful form. Far more likely is they were simply overlooked. The most obvious reason (and the one most seem to accept) the Saddam played hard-ball is because he was afraid of Iran. He couldn't show weakness to them, even if it meant taking the wrath of the international community).
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