Re post 9-11 forces that moved US to attack Iraq - Outome of plot or just confluence of stupidity?

I’ve read Thomas Ricks book “Fiasco” and the follow up book “The Gamble”,and hundreds of articles by various authors about the conflict, and I still remain astounded that no one “in the know” was either powerful enough or inclined to pull the brake lever on this runaway train as we moved to attack Iraq.

I’m normally solidly in the camp that a confederacy of dunces can accomplish amazing things, but in this case that almost seems too facile an explanation. I’m not pretending to special knowledge, but in hindsight of 12 years of history and analysis the fact that the entire nation was mobilized to go to war on mostly faked evidence of a threat to the US still confounds me a bit. For all the jokes we make the reality is that most of the people at the highest levels of government are usually quite intelligent, top of their class people, and quite canny.

It makes you think that somebody, somewhere had to be the puppet master on this but when you get down to the granular scale it’s all whirlpools of narrow self interest and grudges. Even the most suspicious stuff like VP Cheney’s installation of a cherry picking gatekeeper information filter staffed by influential neocons within the intelligence analysis apparatus of the services delivering intelligence to the President is a scrum of petty agendas.

You can argue that Israel might have been involved via their power over the neocons and the neocons hypotheticals for a reshaped and more democratic middle east friendly to Israel, but it’s not like Israel was surreptitious about this. These webs of neo-con - Israeli government linkages were well known and practically celebrated by both parties.

Was it the Iraqi ex-patriots who led by known con-man Ahmed Chalabiwho pushed a looming threat of WMDS that were just a blizzard of lies made out of tissue paper. How could we have taken this known thief and bull shitter and his cohorts at face value?

Was it a President pushed by revenge for his father’s humiliation, evangelical fantasies, and a lack of common sense?

Why were our vaunted intelligence services on which we spend many billions in black box money so pliant, supine and clueless? They just went along with the blizzard of bullshit.

Is there any hard evidence anywhere that it was more than just a perfect storm of stupidity?