The evidence speaks for itself.

More utter nonsense. There was no threat from Iraq. Saddam was a secular leader, if anything the threat is from Iran and Syria. Bush did a good job of deliberately fudging facts and some people obviously bought it.

This is one criteria on which reasonable minds have had major disagreements. Many of those opposed to the war in Iraq argue that Saddam was isolated. That with the existing sanctions, weapons inspectors and continued surveillance we could have averted a full scale war. But this assumes various things that we did not know then or still cannot assume to this day. We do know that Saddam gassed the Kurds in the north with chemical weapons. We do know that he attacked both his neighbors to the east, Iran and Kuwait to the south. We do know he was funding terrorist groups who planned and executed suicide bombings in Israel. We also know that he had designs on waging war on Israel at points in time. We know he had never abided by the requirements of 1991 cease fire. He had kicked out all weapons inspectors on Clinton's watch who there after bombed supposed chemical and biological weapons factories inside Iraq. Almost every nation in the world's intelligence agencies had data suggesting he was pursuing nuclear weapons from Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Germany, Russia, France, Great Britain to our CIA. In a world where 9-11 had just occurred would it be responsible leadership to allow this unfettered threat to grow in an already volatile Middle East? He had behaved aggressively toward his neighbors prior to being ousted from Kuwait. He had behaved aggressively toward US patrols of the no-fly zone on numerous occasions. He violated 17 UN resolutions that demanded he commit to the requirements of the 91 cease fire agreement. He violated the provisions of the oil for food program. Even after belatedly accepting readmittance of weapons inspectors he refused the access to particular areas. I cannot see how one can objectively state that it would be responsible for a leader of a country to allow this threat to fester when it can be assumed he might pass technology or data to terrorist organizions that could be used to attack his arch nemesis the United States. Lastly, in conjuction with this data, the stategic geopolitical aspect Iraq posed, and the humanitarian aspect that most people generally agree upon (Saddam was a brutal dictator who slaughtered close to a million innocents) in composite meet this criteria for me. I understand the aspects of disagreement on this count and many points are valid. However , in complete objectivity acting on the totality of the data we had at the time, inclusive of his previous behavior, I personally believe that our actions met the level of threat.

Assuming for the moment that the decision to invade was just, we charged in there like crazy people. Yes, a brilliant military strategy and victory but the cost (primarily in terms of infrastructure destruction) was way out of proportion to the benefits conferred on the population. If we had designed a campaign to take a few weeks longer but which would have mitigated damages, I believe we would be in a better position now. But, as magellan observes, hindsight is wonderful and I wasn't involved in the decisions...

I guess hindsight is 20/20 vision, but it is now clear that Iraq did not pose much of a threat to us before our invasion - in fact, not nearly the threat it poses to us now. Whether or not the administration acted competently in assessing intelligence from the region before committing us into a prolonged war is up to each individual to decide.