Try as you will, there is a moral dimension to this debate that you can't ignore.

The American people, the ones who pay for a war in life and money, are the ones who control whether we go to war, through their elected representatives; Congress alone has the power to declare war. That's as it ought to be, because when a man dies, he gives up everything he ever had in this world, and to send him out to die is a heavy choice.

Bush didn't sell the war on these "backup" reasons that you give. He didn't sell the war on providing Democracy to the Middle East (or Iraq). Because no one would send their kids to die for that cause. The war was sold as preventing terrorists from getting WMD. In the wake of 9/11, that was a battle cry people would support.

The President distorted the case for war to try for a goal that the American people would not be willing to sacrifice their loved ones for.

And your mention of CIA reports drives this home. Here's how. The CIA is an imperfect organization. It deals with chances, likelihoods, predictions. It predicted that Iraq had WMD, but there was good reason to doubt it. But Bush and Cheney said over and over that there was no doubt about Iraq's WMD, and their nuclear efforts, and their terrorists links. You acknowledge the CIA had some reports that were true, and some that were false. How then could the Bush administration repeated over 953 times, without equivocation, that it was 100% certain about WMD? That is a form of lie that is not acceptable when people are going to die.

And to further show you how this war is a sham, look at the post-war effort. If the war was only about WMD, then we could have just gone in, conquered Iraq, deposed Saddam, left the Bathists in power, and left. There was no UN mandate, nor a mandate from the American public, to transform Iraq into a democratic oasis in the political desert of the middle east.

There's an arrogance to the Bush administration that many find equivalent to treason. It's our country. We the people own it. We're supposed to control it. When the people in charge of our intelligence agencies tell us something is 100% true and it might not be, then they're stealing control of the government from the people and turning it into their own private tool. When they give one motive in public (WMD) and harbor another motive in private (transform Iraq and the Middle East) then they are stealing our government from us. All hail King George and his private military!