I wrote the following a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get it posted because of problems with the DailyKos website. Here it is now.
Glenn Reynolds has been going off lately about how the building of a democracy in Iraq was an original justification for invading Iraq and that Bush & Co. shouldn't be criticized for stressing democracy building now as a justification for the war.
He went off again a couple of weeks ago about a comment in the NYT. Reynolds notes that "this claim that democratic transformation was some sort of new rationalization is, not to put too fine a point on it, an out-and-out lie."
During the run-up to the war, Bush & Co. did in fact mention in passing that democracy is great and that all the oppressed Iraqi people would benefit from a democratic Iraq. But spreading democracy was NOT the reason Bush & Co gave for going to war. Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Powell spent tens of thousands of words citing WMD and terrorism as the reason for invading Iraq and only a few hundred about how democracy would be an ancillary benefit of the war. A careful examination of the pre-war speeches and press conferences (linked below) reveals that Bush & Co. cited a democratic Iraq as a pleasant by-product of deposing Saddam.
The record is indeed compelling, but not in support of Reynolds.
See
Sec. Rice's Sept 2002 interview on PBS The Lehrer News Hour
Bush's 2003 State of the Union
Bush's March 17, 2003 Pre-War Speech
Bush's March 2003 Pre-War Press Conference
Bush's November 2002 Press Conference
Bush's 2002 Speech to the U.N. General Assembly
Cheney's 2002 Interview with Jim Lehrer
Cheney's August 2002 Speech to the VFW
Powell's February 2003 Speech to the U.N. (He doesn't mention democracy building even once!)
Contrast those speeches and press conferences with Bush's 2004 State of the Union, 2004 Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/02/gop.bush.transcript/], 2005 Inaugural Address, and 2005 State of the Union. I am fairly confident that an analytical and statistical analysis of the speeches would not support Reynolds.
Ironically, Wolfowitz's (along with his fellow neocons) rational for deposing Saddam was indeed to establish a democracy in the middle east that would spread to neighboring countries. But that was not the justification given by Bush for invading Iraq.