I think 550 tons of yellowcake uranium, unguarded and unprotected, in the hands of Saddam Hussein, WAS A THREAT! You may argue it wasn't "imminent" but with nukes, you can't really wait around until the threat is "imminent" because then, you have no recourse, unless you want nuclear war.
Establishment of democracy in the middle east is important because it is the "ideological" element to battling terrorism. We can't defeat the radical Islamic ideology with bombs and bullets, remember? So, we need the ideology of democracy to flourish, in order to (hopefully) provide a counter to the radical ideology of hate. It is important to establish it there, because "we" can't expect to implement the counter to the ideology, it would never be accepted, however, if the Iraqi people establish it on their own, it just might work. It's better than the pre-911 idea of leaving things be and ignoring the problem, we simply couldn't do that anymore, after 3000 Americans were murdered on 9/11. Call it "nation building" if you like, we are not building anything except military bases, the Iraqi people are building their nation and it's in the form of a democracy.
