"The point is, we have no choice. I don't want to spin the merry-go-round on this tired argument but we went in to take control of WMD and, surprise... there weren't any."

Well, if all you want is WMD, we got them- Libya handed theirs over. And we major inroads in shutting down a black Market that traded in WMD. If we had simply focused on Afghanistan it's likely neither of these things would have happenned.
The point is we wanted Saddam to comply with his cease fire agreement- which "happenned" to include this provision that Iraq would not have or work towards acquiring WMD. And we have evidence that Saddam did not shut down it's WMD program- this is a violation of cease fire agreement. Having stockpiles of WMD seems fairly unimportant- who is to say that Saddam didn't sell off or give away WMD. Or how can we know that he didn't bury them. Why were Iraq scientists or people familar with Saddam's WMD program a target for assasination by the terrorists?
If the purpose of invading Iraq was only to prevent some WMD from being used against an American or other some target. I think you can measure our invasion of Iraq as successful. But that was not the only stated goal given by President Bush.

"If we had our shit together as far as intelligence goes, we would wouldn't be in this mess and yes goddamn it.... it is a mess."

Look, it was no news to me that the CIA had it's head up it's ass. And really this reforming of the CIA should not get your hopes up. It's like expecting NASA to open the space frontier.

"We might have spent the money and the manpower in other ways to defend our country."

Look, we dump money into Israel and Egypt and we don't get a lot of bang for our buck- all we really get is a chair at the table to try to solve this conflict which has been going on for decades. In comparison the money we have spent on Iraq is fucking bargain.