Prescience!

Kevin lays out the wet and centrist case against war as "You know, they did not fully disclose the truth when selling the Iraq war, did they?". Of course he's got his conscience as an ex-semi-kinda-hawk to wrestle with.

Sure, many people thought that Iraq had a few CW canisters lying around. But how did guys like me know it was all rubbish and wrong?
Well, I'm used to being right, so it's kinda hard to say. But my opinion centered an undereported event that has totally disappeared from mainstream consciousness: the removal of Jose Bustani.

This agressive attitude, long before 9-11, against the guy who wanted to sign up Iraq to CW anti-proliferation treaties was a clear indicator that the US did not want to remove weapons in a sensible way (also because it meant starting at home) but wanted to takeover the playground of their old friend.
It was all in the air, if you cared to look at it, and the long-planned war of choice was tagged-on to the dead of the WTC and led to many disasters including the re-election of Dubya. But the discussion of WMD only revolves around the silly sullied mainstream version. Most people now are luckily wise to it now.

Finally, more from Monbiot, who was really on the ball on this (in 2002!):

War would enable the US to re-establish its authority in an increasingly wayward Middle East, while asserting control over Iraq's vast oil reserves. Iraq is also daddy's unfinished business: for George W, it's personal. War is popular: the more bellicose President Bush becomes, the higher his ratings rise. It justifies increasing state support for the politically important defense industry. Arguably, war also serves as a re-legitimization of the state itself. The Republicans argued so forcefully in the 1990s for a "minimal state" that they almost did themselves out of a job, as many Americans began to wonder why they were paying taxes at all. War is the sole irreducible function of the state, and the ultimate justification of the greatly concentrated powers and resources this "minimal" entity in the US has accumulated. But the underlying reason for these unilateral breaches of the law is that the rest of the world allows them to happen. Hundreds of readers of last week's column wrote to the foreign secretary asking him to stand up to the US. Brian Eno organized a petition signed by celebrities as diverse as Robbie Williams, Damien Hirst, Salman Rushdie and Bianca Jagger, in the hope that, even if it won't listen to anyone else, our government might at least respond to Cool Britannia. But on Friday, the first member state to co-sponsor the US resolution to sack Mr Bustani was the United Kingdom.