I ran across Jacob Sullum's summary of Thomas L. Friedman's enumeration of the four reasons for the war:

• the stated reason (Saddam had WMDs and might give them to terrorists for an attack on the U.S.)


• the moral reason (saving Iraqis and their neighbors from a brutal, murderous tyranny)


• the real reason (after 9/11, the U.S. had to smack a Muslim country around to show it meant business)


• the right reason (defusing the anger that leads to terrorism by transforming Iraq into a model of liberal democracy)

Three of those still sound pretty good to me.