Dirk, that was an excellently delivered and well thought out explaination. And I have to agree with it completely based on my own research and knowledge.
One thing I have to add is that while, as you say, he was not stupid, he did have some remarkable lapses in judgement during his leadership, such as the Iran-Iraq war that sapped his country's resources for the better part of a decade. But overall, yes, I agree with you on that point. As far as being secular goes, I remember an argument from one of my classmates in college that in Iraq a woman could walk down the street in a jogging suit, call a man an idiot to his face, and remain unpunished, while in our ally, Saudi Arabia, she could have faced severe penalties.
As far as the evaluation of the US's actions in Iraq go, I'd say even our timing in starting the war was damning. We withdrew critical forces from Afghanistan who had Bin Laden pinned down in a portion of the country (albeit a rugged, difficult to secure one). Instead of closing the noose by committing further forces to finish the job, the needed operatives had already been committed to preparations for the Iraq invasion. Then, inexplicably, even those forces who were containing him were sapped away. Because of events such as these, and Afghanistan's continual backward slide, and because of Iraq's downward slide into a terrorist breeding ground, I would have to say there is no doubt that we have made the world less secure against terrorism than it was before we went into Iraq.
That is the critical point that many people seem to forget. We went into Afghanistan to shut down terrorist training camps and oust a terror-supporting regime. We went into Iraq to oust a dictator who had been contained for a decade because of highly disputed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that were, should they actually exist, very unlikely to find their way into terrorist hands. And in doing so, we removed troops from Afghanistan, thereby worsening the situation there.
Since I just refreshed the page and saw blur's latest comments, I'll respond to that as well. I agree that its unlikely, however, did you know that the Iraqi government is so worried about casualty figures that the PM demanded that figures not be released to the Red Cross anymore? That doesn't convey a good feeling about the numbers. In addition, many portions of Iraq are still without proper infrastructure. Part of a good political infrastructure is proper record keeping and document issuing. While I do have serious doubts about the half a mil. figure, I also have serious doubts about the 50k figure.
