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Notes -
I remember him using as pretexts for war, in order, WMDs, vague insinuations of Iraq's culpability for 9/11, fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here, and democracy being on the march. I don't recall him ever naming Israel as a reason to invade Iraq. I think the notion that defending Israel's interests were the motivation came largely from looking at the backgrounds of the people who ran Project for a New American Century, and who brought that agenda with them as they accepted cabinet positions in the W. Bush's administration. Other motivations likely included some sort of ill-planned view that we'd get their oil, and some daddy issues (combination of reliving his dad's glory days in the Gulf War and avenging Saddam's attempt on his dad's life in 1993). But the Israel part wasn't spoken out loud, as far as I can remember.
One of Bush's arguments was that Hussein had a documented history of funding terrorism--specifically, providing funds to the families of dead Palestinian terrorists. "Iraq contributed to 9/11" wasn't an administration argument; they pointed to Hussain funding Palestinian terrorism and having at least diplomatic relations with AQ higher-ups, and then argued that those starting points could lead to closer collaboration in the future to the detriment of America and the West in general.
In the US, Bush's arguments were WMD, funding terrorism, and genocide/human rights abuses. At the UN, the Bush administration focused on the WMD angle, because non-proliferation of nuke/bio/chem was the strongest argument (both practically and legally) for getting one or more resolutions through the Security Council.
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