Now that the Bush administration has failed to find any WMD in Iraq, despite insisting over and over again that the WMD was there as they sought authority for the war, their rhettoric now attempts to piggy back the invasion of Iraq onto the "general" war on terror. This is most convenient.
This claim might have a slice of credibility if Iraq wasn't the one country in the middle east which had the LEAST tolerance for Islamic extremism of any. It also might have a slice of credibility if Iraq did not have the second largest oil reserves in the world. Or if Halliburton, Dick Cheney's former company, didn't stand to make TENS OF BILLIONS of your tax dollars rebuilding and reconstituting infrastructure in Iraq after HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of your tax dollars were spent smashing Iraq. Or if it wasn't blatently obvious to any critical eye paying any attention that it has been George W. Bush's plan from the beginning, long before September 11, 2001, to bring Saddam Hussein's head back to daddy on a plate as revenge for Hussein's idiotic attempt to assassinate Bush Sr. The President sent U. S. military personnel into harm's way to settle an old, personal score of his.
Saddam Hussein was and is a megalomaniac. He did not want an Islamic theocracy in Iraq and did not want any Islamic extremism in Iraq, because he considered it to be a threat to his regime. His security apparatus played 100% on people's fear of death. If thousands of young, hormone crazed, desperately poor, men are told that they will find 72 petulant virgins sitting on couches waiting for them when they die a martyrs death for Islam, that serioiusly undermines a regime. It sets the stage for an "Islamic Revolution", which is what happened in neighboring Iran in 1979. Saddam didn't want that. He wanted people's hearts and minds to belong to "Saddamism". It is well known and documented that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been bitter enemies for many years, due to their different visions for the middle east.
Speaking of Iran, THAT is the country we should have invaded, if we were going to invade anyplace besides Afghanistan, in the war on terror. That place has been a hotbed for Islamic extremism, a haven for Al Queda, and a breeding ground for anti american sentiment for decades. I'm not saying we should have, I'm saying that that would have been the place to go if it was truly necessary to go beyond Afghanistan. In that case, it should have been Iran, not Iraq.
But, you see, Iran didn't have huge oil reserves. And it didn't have Saddam's head to bring home to daddy on a plate, either.