Either that or you're baiting us.
Seriously, you're not having any post-invasion thoughts about our pretext for going to war in the first place, are you?

Iraq was on Bush's list LONG before this or that (take your pick).
Bush has had a hard on for terrorists hiding under any rock, especially the ones that threatened to kill his father over a decade ago.
And the oil and re-construction deals didn't smell too bad either.

Let's face it.
Bush's self-righteousness, (aided and albeit abetted by prayer), his justification of invading another country under pretext of the Stars and Stripes forever (and consent of the weak-kneed Congress) pushed it's way into Iraq to the tune of "I'll show THEM!"
Revenge was his.
The ensuing clean-up belongs to someone else.

>"where was the intellegence that such weapons existed coming from, and perhaps more importantly: Why?"

I answered the why.
The where?
Ask Colin Powell why he used that "college student's thesis paper" for the "intelligence" on attacking Iraq's "WMD."
That's our intelligence agencies for you.
Aided and abetted by the cranks/cronies in the CIA.
Handing it over to the UN and American journalists as "proof".

It either shows you they have us hog-tied and are taking advantage of us (to put it lightly).
It's outrageous to think they could feed us this GARBAGE, without thinking some whip journalist could show them it was a fake piece of "evidence". (They think we're THAT stupid??)

Powell and Armitage, Cheney and Bush, Kissinger et al are all too busy bluffing us while protecting their own interests. If our "intelligence" agencies were ANY good to begin with, 9/11 would never had happened. Remember, the FBI at the highest levels in Washington refused repeated requests to monitor Mossaud's computer. And the guy who stopped them each and every time, got a raise AND a PROMOTION after 9/11.
He didn't get fired, suspended or even investigated.

Keep eating your swamp cabbage.
I hear it's good for the brain.