Forgive me, but the ignorance and complete lack of historical perspective contained in these statements is mind boggling! Saddam broke the cease fire agreement, providing legitimancy to the multi-national coalition of over thirty nations that either participated in or otherwise materially supported the invasion of Iraq. THAT is historical fact.
And Crocket, Saddam was supporting terror activities against the West, and providing safe harbor for them (including Al Quida). That has also been positively established. That, coupled with his breaking the terms of the cease fire of the first Gulf War and the universal belief by ALL major western intelligence agencies that he was trying to preserve and rebuild his WMD program made Iraq a logical target for prosecuting the WOT.
These are gross overstatements. Only Great Britain provided any substantive support beyond token gestures, with the governments of our coalition partners being generally at odds with their populations. It was a paper coalition backed up by a handful of troops here or there and the US and British military and economies shouldering the major burden, and even there, economically, the US by far more than the entire coalition combined.
As for supporting terrorism, there are probably 10 other countries in the region that supported radical Islamic terrorism to a far greater extent. Stalinist style secular dictators don't like to have competitors in their borders. Even the Bush administration (with the exception of Cheney) had backed away from this position fairly early on. Iran was a far more logical target under this framework, and for that matter Saudi Arabia.
Now, Saddam did break the cease fire agreements and did inhibit the inspection process. But, he had no active WMD program and was nowhere near close to making a bomb or a bomb infrastructure for that matter, but maybe 10 years or more down the road he could have managed a regional threat. IMO, I don't believe Bush lied but rather WMD were used as the most powerful selling tool for an invasion/realignment in the ME policy his senior foreign policy cabinet members had pushed since the 1990s. Too bad for bush his assumptions of WMDs (shared by many in the international and political community) turned out to be false. And, too bad the assumptions of the PNAC looked better on paper than they worked in practice.
Had the Iraqi's welcomed us with open arms and set up the immediate US-friendly democracy that Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld etc. expected -- our bastion in the Middle East -- then nobody would care either way today from liberals to the media to the triumphant self proclaimed conservatives. Everybody loves a winner.
As you point out though, the invasion was technically legal, with UN support and with the support of the Democrats in Congress.
Charon
