wither in the light

Hrrrmmm... apparently starting in June 2002 the Pentagon went to Bush three times with Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq, in their sights, but Bush kept turning them away:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
...
"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it," said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
...
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

Am I reading that right? Taking out actual terrorists, the alleged goal of Bush's policy of pre-emption against terrorists, was ignored because doing so would interfere with Bush's plan to start a war that used that policy as an excuse (without actually meeting the requirements). There are ironies within ironies in that one.