78 people voted yes, it was worth it. I have been reading the thread and haven't seen a single argument presented as to how America is better off as a result of the war. Did I miss something here?
I can answer that.
A) I saw earlier that if we would have waited on Iran and Iraq to fight, we wouldn't have had to do it and it would have kept Iran from getting a nuke. That sounds good in theory (no sarcasm, it really does), however, a war between Iraq and Iran had already been fought to a stand-still and Iran was still trying to get a nuke. That is why that theory was probably shot down in our gov't. I believe one of the reasons we attacked Iraq is that it could be a staging area to attack Iran later, if need be. Iraq has said they wouldn't let us use their country but I promise you if we threaten to cut off the funding we give them if they don't, we'll be staging in Diyala Province in no time. This is not unprecedented. We did the same in Germany and Japan after we beat them to stave off Stalin. You have to hold the ground you fight for.
B) I really believe we had what was thought to be good intel about WMD's in Iraq. Now, we all know that was false, but I think our gov't had intel they thought was credible then. You have to remember, we didn't have the massive intelligence capability then that we do now. It wasn't as easy to see what they had. The UN couldn't even see what they had on inspections.
C) I believe Saddam wanted everyone to think he had a nuke or something similar so he could maintain power in the region. If Saddam came out and admitted he didn't have anything, we would have left him alone, but Iran and other countries may have come after him for the way he had acted all the years before. He played a game of chicken with Bush because he thought he would blink like Clinton did. He thought wrong. I was a part of the '03 invasion and while his military could probably stir up trouble with other military's in the region, they had nothing for us. They were at least 15 years (being generous) behind in military tech.
D) Oil may have had a big thing to do with it. I have never seen proof of this, but it is a valid theory. Fighting for resources is a very touchy subject and one that I would hesistate to say is a valid reason for going to war. Now, if it was seen as a secondary benefit to one of the purposes above, I see nothing wrong with that.
I don't believe, like a lot of other people on here, that Iraq was some big conspiracy. I think it was a huge swing and miss as far as the WMD's go, but, I do think we went to war with honest intentions. There have been many instances in history where a country entered war or battle with mistaken intelligence. This will probably be one of the biggest ones for the history books. I would say this though. I believe the risk was worth it. You have to agree that everyone in the world thought the guy had WMD's because of how secretive he was about it. Who in their right mind would play chicken with the largest and most capable military in the world just to fool people? A mad man, that's who.