Wolfowitz and the Neocons - They dreamed that their long-ridiculed domino theory of Middle East democracy would be proven true. They also had visions of securing Israel and securing themselves a place in the heart of the religious right.

Rumsfeld - He dreamed that his vision for a quicker, lighter military would be vindicated by a full-scale invasion.

Cheney and his cronies - They had visions of oil - intoxicating visions of a friendly, oil-rich outpost in the Middle East that would provide us all the oil we ever needed - and would fatten the pockets of Texas oil companies at the same time.

Condi Rice - She had visions of sounding strong and becoming one of the boys. She also had visions of future campaigns, in which she could run as a war hero.

Karl Rove - He had visions of a victorious war president. He could taste it. Bush could record a speech in the heart of Baghdad, and that speech could be broadcast in October 2004. Oh, the sweet sweet visions that Rove had in the night.

George Bush - He saw a chance to vindicate his father - a chance to kill the man who tried to kill his own blood. He also had visions of future Bush monuments on the Mall in DC. He saw himself coasting in 2004 as a victorious war president. It was a glorious vision.

I've no doubt that, somewhere in the administration (probably deep in the bowels, where policy isn't made, it's followed) there were people who believed that Saddam was a real threat, and that removing him would be a humanitarian good. I don't blame them for that, I thought the same thing from the evidence that was available to me. (I finally turned against the possibility of eventual military action when I realized that there was every reason to believe, looking at what happened in Afghanistan and the way they went about the "diplomacy" which preceded the invasion, that Bush would fuck the whole thing up, which turned out to be very much the case.)

Postscript If you head over to Legal Fiction to read his entire post, take a look at this one also, a little farther down the page, where Publius compares the reconstruction of Iraq to the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. It's very compelling, and offers justification for my feeling that our responsibility for the mess we've made of Iraq can only be fulfilled by a long-term commitment, and that by withdrawing Bush will, in the long-run, do much more harm then he did by making war in the first place. As Publius writes: "[W]e should all be occupation hawks now." (And that's from someone who says he strongly opposed the war, not from a namby-pamby who flirted with being a liberal hawk, like myself.)