I think that fatman’s points are well-taken, and I would respond as follows. (And by the way, how does that italics thing work?)

The fact is that we were attacked by Al Qaeda. Bin Laden and many of his top people are still alive and well. (Could you imagine what we would hear from Republicans if there was a Democratic administration and bin Laden was free nearly five years after 9/11?). Not only have we been unable to capture him, but we gave him the best recruiting tool he could ever hope for. I’m all for fighting terrorist, but when you do so, you should shoot the other guy and not your own foot.

It’s true that the countries you named did and/or do support terrorism or look the other way. However, only two of those countries–North Korea and Iraq–were believed to have WMD. And since North Korea had nuclear weapons and was testing intermediate-range missiles, we couldn’t invade without the risk of getting our troops vaporised (and maybe the cities of Seoul, Manilla, and Tokyo as well). Thus it made more sense to deal with North Korea diplomatically, which we’re trying to do. Of the rest, Iraq, based on what we thought we knew at the time, seemed to be the biggest threat, and thus was dealt with militarily. As for Al Qaeda, while Bin Laden is still on the loose, I was under the impression that we had rounded up or killed a good many of his lieutenants. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Of the terrorists I named, 1) Abu Nidal was openly in Iraq when he either committed suicide or (more likely) was murdered by Saddam’s security forces in 2002. 2) Abu Abbas (of Achille Lauro infamy) was captured just south of Bagdhad by U.S. forces in 2003 and ended up dying while in custody. 3) Abu Moussab al-Zarqawi went to Iraq after he was wounded in the fighting in Afghanistan. There he founded Ansar al-Islam (now known as Al Qaeda in Iraq), a terrorist group that operated the training camp in NE Iraq and launched attacks against the Kurds. And whom Saddam refused to extradite to Jordan when King Abdullah personally requested it (al Zarqawi is a Jordanian national). Only Carlos the Jackal was arrested elswhere

2) “What have the Iraqis lost over the last three years?” If you take Bush’s estimate of 30,000 dead, you have the equivalent of one hundred 9/11’s for a country of Iraq’s size. I’m amazed anyone could ask this question.

While I agree that 30,000 innocent civilians killed is a horrible price to pay, compare that to the estimated one million Kuwaitis, Kurds, Iraqi Shi’ites and Iranians who died during the twenty-four years of Saddams’s regime. Many of them after Bush the Elder left the Shi’ites hanging out to dry in 1991.

3) Re the Hussein family: of course it’s pure speculation what would have happened had we not invaded Iraq, but reporting from the trial and elsewhere shows Hussein to be a man who was indecisive, paranoid, and always fearful that each day would be his last because he apparently didn’t even trust those in his inner circle. It also seems that his kids were universally detested. I read these reports in the paper editions of the Times and the Economist – I’ll see if I can dig up something online.

As you say, pure speculation. Paranoia is the lot brutal dictators. And Iraq under Saddam sounds a lot like late Imperial Rome, where the army controlled the people, the Praetorian Guard controlled the rest of the army, and Ceasar worried about how to control the Praetorian Guard. But even if you’re right, how long would it have taken? How many more people would have died in Saddam’s torture chambers? And what other mischief would he and his brats have gotten up to?

4) What happened to Saddam’s WMD? My guess is that, like everything else, the magnitude of his stockpiles was vastly exaggerated. What we do know is that there were no WMD to be found, and no evidence of recent activity to acquire them. (The meeting in Niger, which the administration seized upon to justify the invasion, happened four years before we invaded).

Maybe so, but I seem to recall Hans Blix reporting that there were some 600 to 1,000 tons of materials from Saddam’s WMD program unaccounted for (No, I can’t remember where I read it and every time I try a Google search, I end in sensory overload). I also recall that troops found 500 tons of unrefined uranium and 1.8 metric tons of yellowcake at a place called Tuwaitha (BBC, 21 June, 2003). And we have found equipment that could have been used to produce chemical and biological weapons.

5) You implicitly agree with my statement (Iran and North Korea are far greater threats), and I am sure you are correct that Al Qaeda is more of a loose confederation than something with a corporate structure (for lack of a better phrase). However, we did not invade Iraq to cut off Al Qaeda funding and safe havens. I am not aware of any reports that Iraq funded Al Qaeda, and any haven provided to its members was transitory and well before we attacked them.

North Korea was then, and is now a greater threat than Iraq, but as I said before, one best handled diplomatically if possible. And while Iran may now be greater threat than Iraq was then, at the time nobody that I know of thought that. Which is why we invaded Iraq first. There also appears to be a much larger and better organized oppostion to Iran’s theocracy then there was to Hussein’s dictatorship, which gives us hope that the Iranians may institute regime change on their own.

6) The issue of a pre-emptive war is complex, and I think there are times when it can be justified, but only when there is a clear and immediate danger. The Cuban missile crisis may fall in this category. However, the danger from Iraq was neither clear nor immediate – in fact, it was minimal and distant. Iraq did not have any weapons to threaten us, nor did they have the means to deliver them. If they decided to restart WMD programs, it would have been years before they could do anything. There are a lot of Iraqi kids who will grow up without parents because of an American policy mistake. To me, that is a very shameful thing.

peter, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this point. To wait until your enemy has marshalled all of his forces and weapons and is ready to attack is sheer lunacy when those weapons include WMD. That way lies far higher casualty counts, military and civilian, than we’ve seen in Iraq so far. Far better to take him before he’s ready and (hopefully) minimize the loss of life.

As for shameful policy mistakes, Bush the Elder’s encouraging the Iraqi Shi’ites to rise up against Saddam and then abandoning them was far more shameful and (I suspect) cost far more innocent civilians their lives than anything Bush the Younger has done. What Bush the Younger is doing now is correcting that very shameful policy mistake.

I do not think we should have invaded Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, or today’s Burma, all of which are as bad or worse than Hussein’s Iraq. It has never been American foreign policy to topple unsavory regimes, and (in my opinion) for good reason.

Also, on the Iraq War, I was a supporter from the beginning. In fact, long before the war began I was a vocal advocate of using American military power to spread freedom. Peter, you claim that we were not responsible for Saddam’s atrocities but are responsible for those that have happened since he was deposed, and that’s moral cowardice at its greatest. We are human beings and our country possesses the greatest forces for freedom on this Earth – diplomatic, military, and economic. For us to stand idly by while people are oppressed and slaughtered because it isn’t our problem is reprehensible. Who else is going to fix it? The Iraqi dissenters were too busy being raped and shot, if I recall correctly.

That said, to claim that we’ve actually made the world better by removing Saddam is a long shot in the extreme. My position that the U.S. military should be used to make people more free rests on the assumption that that’s what we’re actually doing with it. In very few senses are the people of Iraq more free now than they were with Saddam around and, on top of that, we’ve put Iran in a position to be a whole lot worse for a whole lot longer. This war has been a near-total disaster and I sincerely doubt that I would advocate so forcefully for it if given another chance.

I join TWL in agreeing with Peter: Bush is clearly unfit for office. Those who continue to defend him are either lying or delusional. Mark, I apologize for saying that to you, but I can’t see how you can stand by this man. His presidency is a failure.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. But before resting my argument, I’d like to use an analytical tool that you’ve alluded to rather frequently in your blog: cost-benefit.

A cost-benefit analysis of the war in Iraq would summarily reveal that the costs incurred to date far outstrip the benefits — with no improvement in site.

Our actions have significantly de-stabilized the region; strengthened our most vociferous enemy, Iran; radicalized a large and growing number of otherwise secular Muslims; made friends of former natural enemies – Osama’s jihadists and non-radical Muslims – against a common enemy, the U.S., etc., etc., etc.

I have not even mentioned the thousands and thousands of lives that have been lost or permanently crippled in this war.

Now, one could argue whether these losses are due to poor execution or dubious war rationale. I’d reply by saying, Both.

That which starts poorly, ends poorly.