I was well aware you were case 2 as opposed to thinking Raoul was a case 1 although he appears to waffle on that below.
(from another post above)
Hmm, I'm happy I don't understand that.

Every decision is based on balancing the potential for negative consequences against positive ones.

That's precisely why the war was opposed; who's going to succeed Saddam? The US wasn't prepared to rebuild the peace in Iraq.

I see no relevance of economic scale to moral justifications for war

I meant that ,today, because so little money and so few people are involved in the war against Iraq, people are far more concerned about their personal well being (thus the economics) than it was the case during WW2.

such attacks are against US law

How can a civilized country argue that assassinating a dictator is against the law and yet accept killing thousands of innocent citizens who never did anything wrong to your country?
In my real world, starting a war, unprovoked, with the intention of occupying the invaded country, is far far worse than bombing it once or sending a commando to neutralize its leader.

Russia and France and assorted UN officials were waiting for their latest round of Saddam funding.

Iraq was undergoing an embargo and the private companies that would have profited from it are so few and the money so little compared to the entire trade exchange of those countries, that it becomes a baseless argument. As I've written previously, Iraq was France's 27th commercial partner, by order of importance, while the US is the 5th.

No one finds a smoking gun by twiddling their fingers
Hans Blix (when Saddam was in Power) couldn't find WMDs, and neither could Kay (when Saddam was no threat anymore). To pretend that all those WMDs are safe in another coutry defies logic.Why didn't he use them in the first place, if they existed? Whom would Saddam trust ,outside, to deliver those WMDs to? Why would he give them away if he needed them (if they existed)?

The US invaded a foreign country that had nothing to do with what triggered the urge to do that (9/11) ; this isn't courage, revenge or self-defense ; it's imperialism.

Raoul