Mirror of Justice: Phoning it In: "is there any evidence that this administration treated the process of deciding to go to war with the moral seriousness required by Catholic teachings? Or did they instead, as the Downing Street Memo said, fix the evidence to reach the policy conclusions they already desired?"
I think there is some evidence. One of the main reasons for resuming the Iraqi war was never mentioned by the Administration (strategic benefit).
After Afghanistan was liberated -- arguably a pure just war as testified to by the presence of Canadian and German troops (after the victory) -- the Admin had to decide what to do next.
It discovered a very convenient target. A nation we were still at war with since the 1991 cease fire, a nation where we had aircraft in the air and advisors on the ground in the North. The continuation of the war was proved by Iraqi threats to our aircraft every few weeks (targeting radar) and US & British destruction of their radar sites every few weeks.
The fact that our war with Iraq had started with the approval of everyone except Jordan and the PLO, was another sweetener. Since the war was already on, and since Gulf War I easily met just war principals, that sort of analysis was minimized. Combined with geography -- a country whose control would isolate both Iran (surrounded except for Russia) and Syria. Split the Middle East, allow us to remove troops from Saudi Arabia and offer the possibility of a more democratic regime...
Note the fact that we didn't even have to meaningfully invade Iraq's sovereignty since we had already impaired it (with full UN approval) via Kurdistan and no-fly zones.
Lots of arguments in favor. Most of those arguments could not be made because they would prove too revealing.
