I think the thing which drove us liberal nonhawks nuts as we were heading into war was that the Bushies were very obviously not especially concerned with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Sure it was their stated reason. Sure it was a surprise to them that they found absolutely nothing which could've been a ridiculous justification for the war (given our media at the time a bottle of bleach sitting next to a bottle of ammonia somewhere probably would've been enough). If it hadn't been clear before the fact that the Bush adminstration mocked and obstructed the UN weapons inspectors (Those losers can't even find the weapons! They're everywhere! We know where they are but we won't tell them!) made it rather obvious.
I suppose there were some liberal hawks who believed in WMD and thought some sabre rattling to force the inspectors in to find them would be a good idea. Though how any of them really believed that the Bush administration wasn't going to go to war no matter what I don't quite get. And, more to the point, plenty of the liberal hawks didn't give a shit about the mystery weapons either. They wanted people to go fight "Tom Friedman's war" or whatever fantasy game of geopolitical chess they thought they were engaged in.
