Feith and Begore!

WMD was only a part — albeit an important part — of the security-threat case for removing Saddam. More importantly, it was not, by itself, sufficient to do what cried out to be done: establish a coherent nexus between our mission in Iraq and the wider war on terror.

...the administration was overly narrow in emphasizing WMD prior to the war, and neglected to highlight the evidence (which has gotten only stronger over time) that Saddam had been cultivating jihadist groups (including al Qaeda) since the early 1990s. The problem was not just that Saddam might use WMD; it was that (a) he had strong enough ties to jihadist groups that it was plausible that he would supply them with WMD capability, and (b) wholly apart from WMD, it was plausible he would aid and abet jihadist groups in the ways only a state sponsor can — the wherewithal that allows a terror network to project power on the scale of a nation-state.

Post-invasion, when we did not find the anticipated stockpiles of WMD (notwithstanding that what we did find was alarming), the over-emphasis on WMD enabled the Left to concoct a smear that the invasion was unjustified, that it was built on a lie, and therefore that the cause was not righteous. Despite the fact that jihadists had been operating in Iraq long before the invasion and that Osama bin Laden himself was urging Iraq as the central front in a global war, the Left convinced many Americans that Iraq was a foolish "distraction" from the "real" war on terror in Afghanistan (which war, it bears observing, the Left would also be attacking if there were no Iraq).