Was the invasion of Iraq justified?

Now that all is said and done. Do you think the Bush administration was right to invade Iraq?If so what were the justifications? Did they knowingly lie to the American people and congress?

Firstly, all is not said and done, we are on but page 500 in a 10,000 page book.

If so what were the justifications?
Their obligation to safeguard the US, its citizens [..].

CIA: No evidence of WMD transfer

Agency has no proof that Saddam gave weapons to terrorists

By Walter Pincus
THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — The CIA’s search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert.

ANTHONY CORDESMAN, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.

“No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists,” Cordesman wrote of Kay’s briefing. “Only possibility was Saddam’s Fedayeen [his son’s irregular terrorist force] and talk only.”

One of the concerns the Bush administration cited early last year to justify the need to invade Iraq was that Hussein would provide chemical or biological agents or weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists. Despite the disclosure that U.S. and British intelligence officials assessed that Hussein would use or distribute such weapons only if he were attacked and faced defeat, administration spokesmen have continued to defend that position. [..]

Yesterday, allegations of new evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda contained in a classified annex attached to Feith’s Oct. 27 letter to leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were published in the Weekly Standard. Feith had been asked to support his July 10 closed-door testimony about such connections. The classified annex summarized raw intelligence reports but did not analyze them or address their accuracy, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.

Read on ...

This in the news today:

Quote:

CIA: No evidence of WMD transfer

Agency has no proof that Saddam gave weapons to terrorists

By Walter Pincus
THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 ...

US 'proof' of Saddam's al-Qa'ida link
By Stephen Hayes, The Weekly Standard
November 17, 2003

Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks and Iraqi financial support for al-Qa'ida - perhaps even for September 11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta - according to a top-secret US government memorandum.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from the US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Douglas Feith, to senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, who head the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into pre-war intelligence claims made by the Bush administration.

Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive and corroborated by multiple sources.

Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al-Qa'ida terrorists and Iraqi officials. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of the US's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo - which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points - Iraq/al-Qa'ida contacts began in 1990 and continued through to mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq war began.
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Don't you think it's odd after all this time this information emerges? I find it difficult to take the information at face value. Not after the falsehoods we were fed to get us to this point in time.