However, I think that if one considers what was said publicly was in in a sense difficult to refute, that it wasenough to garner some support other than the Neocon approach (which I thin bush just used without necessarily signing on) that became the rationale along with the WMD bit which Wolfotwits later aknowledged had been a mistake and was overhyped.
I suspect that like any MBA, Bush looked for synergies in his strategery. Thus things like not committing heavily to Afghanistan but instead going elsewhere to disrupt AQ et.al. with an unexpected stroke (which became expected due to political problems, to wit, supporting Blair to keep him on side); attacking the Region the so-called terrorists came from (Saudia Arbia was out of the question, too much disruption of the world oil supply and we want China to have all the oil they need. Afghnanistan is not part of the ME so did not count); selecting a pariah state and removing an unpopular autocrat which would elicit less objection than most others; forestalling the move by Iraq to convert their oil sales to the Euro; the disruption of the French, German and Russian near monopolies in ME commerce (while mildly upsetting EU consolidation efforts at the time ongoing...); attacking a point in the ME which would offer geographic leverage over the rest of the area (and thus hopefully getting large bases in the MEfrom which to annoy the neighbors); the quixotic idea of planting 'democracy' in the ME and a host of other little things. Not least the message the US is nuts...
Also a lot of people wanted to get out of Northern and Southern Watch efforts, the Saudis wanted us out of their country so they could crack down on local dissidents and Kuwait and Doha etc. don't really offer enough basing area. A plus was getting in the knickers of France, Germany and Russia to the extent that when Baker visited them postwar with I'm sure interesting things in his attache case, he was able to 'persuade' them to forgive much Iraqi debt -- while letting them know we had other even more incriminating items.
Little of all that would sell well publicly, what did sell well enough was the allegation of a threat -- made little sense but the media isn't bright and it was good enough to get things started.
I've always believed Bush rushed the effort and did it the way he did because he believed had he not gotten a second term, his replacement would do nothing about AQ et.al. but make ineffectual slaps they way his four predecessors did and would do nothing about Saddam. Don't know but I suspect they truly believed the WMD bit to at least a driving extent.
It is interesting to ponder what might have occurred had we gone when first planned instead of delaying about six months to support Blair. That would have been before Saddam gave his two Russian Gen-gen 'advisers' gold medals and he had released all prisoners from jails, passed out weapons and set up his post invasion 'insurgency'...
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