Is that we've been under terrorist attacks for generations: the ETA, the IRA, the CCC, the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhof gang, the Palestinians, Carlos, etc...and we always dealt with them with the police, interpol, infiltrating them, protecting planes, but we didn't use armies (except against the IRA) because we were not at war against a country, but terrorist groups.

Come to think of it: modern terrorism finds its origin in pro-western countries where they feel oppressed for a reason or another. That's why they are dangerous to us: they hate the power in their own country and fight those who encourage it.
Those terrorists travel undercover and oppressing countries like Iraq was and North Korea is, hate to loose control over their people as they travel outside. So ,they prevent them from traveling and therefore, we don't find terrorists coming from those countries, unless they have severed their ties to their original oppressing country.

If the US needs to bring up the 9/11 argument to justify Iraq's occupation, it looks more than ever like an abused child becoming an abuser himself (of course his next victim isn't the first perpetrator). Besides, if 9/11 has really risen the hatred in the US, as the article suggests, it means OBL has won.

The US wants to bring its kind of democracy to Iraq and the region? But why not let the Iraqis themselves do it?

One of the lessons colonial countries got from the countries they colonized before was that the colonized people were far happier to see us leave them alone and mind their own business, EVEN IF it meant their living standards collapsed tenfold. Even today, when asked about their inability to progress like the western world, they will never accept being recolonized again.

Raoul