Why did we invade Iraq 3 1/2 years ago?

This is an annoying old question, but honestly, I've yet to hear an answer that justfied military intervention in my eyes. You guys can pick this up or not. My question is not whether we should remain in Iraq. I am simply questioning the case for war. I am sure you guys have heard these arguments before, but I am rehashing them here as a startoff point to hopefully get some discussion going.

The case for war as I understand it was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that it was only a matter of time before he used them against the United States or supplied them to our sworn enemy Al Qaeda. Many critics of the war in Iraq cite the fact that we have yet to find and are unlikely to ever find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as conclusive proof against the case for war. While this certainly vindicates critics of the war, to use it as conclusive proof against the case for war illogically privileges hindsight.

The suspicion that Saddam Hussein did in fact possess weapons of mass destruction is probably the most plausible of all the claims of the case for war. His aggressive military ambitions in the past proved at the least that he sought the force necessary to subject large amounts of people to his will. Also, his unwillingness to fully accomodate the UN weapons inspectors made it seem as though he had something to hide. I think it would be reasonable to contend that to the best of our knowledge, it did seem as though Saddam Hussein either had or wanted to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The claim, however, that Saddam posed an imminent threat to U.S. security is far more dubious. In comparison to Saddam's record of defiance of UN resolutions, the evidence that Saddam possessed the capability of carrying out an attack on the United States was scant. Even less supported was the idea that Saddam Hussein had a connection with Al Qaeda. To this day I am not sure if this claim rested on anything more than the fact that both Hussein and Al Qaeda are associated with the Middle East. The notion that all people from the Middle East who share a dislike of America are in bed together grossly oversimplifies the complex web of interests that are actually present in that part of the world.

So with evidence of an imminent threat to U.S. security so slim, why did the Bush administration insist on invading Iraq?

As a bit of a post-script, I would also discount the supposed "for the sake of democracy" argument as adding anything to the case for war. If the mission of the U.S. is to spread democracy throughout the world by way of its military, then by that logic we should be invading many other countries that do not qualify as democracies by most standards. The argument still leaves the important question, "Why Iraq and not North Korea?" unanswered.