It remains to be seen whether the reasons for going to war were "obviously false." It hasn't been determined whether the WMDs exist and it might take years to find out the truth...Iraq is a large country, so searching for weapons really is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Let me say why I think Bush was justified in going to war the way he did. I think the reason we went in there was b/c the administration honestly believed, based on our intelligence, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them against us. No, I don't think it was b/c Bush believed there was an AQ link. I believe that he thought Saddam posed a threat to us by himself.
Whether he actually had WMDs has been undetermined, as stated earlier, and is an issue for another post. But our intelligence definitely said he did. And you have to admit, two hard facts made this intelligence seem plausible. 1) Saddam had possession of such weapons in the late 90's when he used chemical weapons against the Kurds. 2) Saddam was obviously an unstable dictator. He attacked his own people (Kurds) and there was that whole Kuwait thing.
Well, if you were president and the CIA told you that this unstable dictator had WMDs and was prepared to use them against us, what would you have done about it? Granted, we were not 100% sure that he had WMDs, but even the best intelligence can't offer a 100% probability. The only way we could have been sure was if he actually did use them against us, and I don't think we were willing to wait until then. I think that initiating preemptive war, while distasteful and ill-timed, was a response to a perceived threat. Yes, a perceived threat, not a certain one...b/c with intelligence you can never know for certain whether something 20,000 miles away actually exists. You have to just act on what you have.
What other solution did we have? Approaching other countries? Not an option, as that would have taken years, if it ever got accomplished at all. "Building an international coalition" may sound all well and good, but the fact is that it's harder than most ppl make it sound. Every country is going to look out for their own interests. AQ has made it clear that they are targeting Americans much more so than other nations (AQ bombed Spain to scare them then offered a truce to all of Europe) so do you think that the leaders of France/Germany/Russia will commit their military (and hence, lose public opinion/political power) just to protect America from its enemies, when the French/German/Russian public despise America? I don't think so. I'm extremely unconvinced when I hear Kerry talking about building an "international coalition..." like he thinks it will be a cake walk.
And forget about going to the United Nations, they're powerless...they watched as Iraq violated UN resolutions for years and did nothing about it.
