I seem to remember that the only reason that WMD's became the most talked about reason, was because the "powers that be" thought that the WMD's would be the easiest to get the Security Council to agree upon for the resolution, but that ALL of the reasons were equally justifiable.
Am I correct?
I most remember, as wagglebee stated, the primary reason that Bush and Powell kept bringing up, over and over again, was Iaq's failure to comply with U.N. resolutions; WMD came up over and over again, if I'm not mistaken, because the press kept bringing that up as "the" reason to go to war.
Yes, I remember their concern about WMD...when Powell spoke to the U.N., he had charts and pictures of trucks believed to be mobile carriers of WMD, etc.
I honestly do not remember your take on it, though you may be 100% correct.
From journalist Bill Sammon's account in Misunderestimated, pg 108:
...the press did not realize that the administration had originally considered drafting three separate resolutions."I'm not sure we've ever mentioned this to anybody," Rice told me. "We actually thought at one time of trying to get resolutions from the U.N. -- after the president's speech -- not just on WMD, but on terrorism and human rights as well."
But she added: "We couldn't really get anybody else interested in it -- in the world community -- because there was a kind of sense that well, the WMD was what people considered the most pressing. But we actually tried to do that."