No, I very much remember the rational shifting around all the time even if WMDs were main centerpiece. Just read the AUMF if you don’t think so. It’s littered with all types of “reasons” for the invasion. I don’t know that “liberating Iraqi women” was ever mentioned, but the quote in the OP is typical Bush. If anyone challenges your reasoning, shift to something else.
Bush routed the Taliban out of Afghanistan. As a consolation prize he gave them Iraq, formerly one of the most advanced Arab nations for women’s rights (relative to the other Arab states, that is). Now it’s got to be the worst.
Before someone writes to say “You idiot, the Taliban were never in Iraq” I meant that as shorthand for “Islamist ultrafundie militants who destroy women’s rights when they take over countries.” Not the same group, not even the same brand of fundamentalism, but similar in trampling on human rights. There were human rights abuses in earlier Islamist regimes (like Khomeini’s Iran or Turabi’s Sudan), but the more recent spate of brutality among Taliban and Iraqi fundies exceeds their predecessors for sheer viciousness.
As John Mace noted, the rationales were all over the map. Perhaps I should have been more precise and noted that the time I was mainly thinking of was post-invasion, when they were still hoping like Hell the WMDs would turn up, but it was looking worse and worse for that. At that point, championing female liberation as some sort of ex post facto justification did come into vogue with the neocons.
Here’s some examples of the tokenism and pandering.