The man had a throne in front of a huge painting of ballistic missiles. I'm assuming the nose cones were not going to be full of teddy bears.

The most you can say about an invasion of Iraq is that if we hadn't done it now, it would still have had to be done a few years down the road.

Saddam was not going to get less dangerous as time went on, and the United Nations has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are completely toothless in the face of even mild political resistance.

They can't stop Iran from proceeding with its nuclear weapons. They can't stop the carnage in Sudan. They didn't catch the Pakistan nuke ring. They didn't disarm Libya. They have no apparent influence on North Korea. The sanctions on Iraq accomplished nothing whatsoever except to enrich Saddam and impoverish the rest of the nation.

The United Nations is not going to save the day. Now what?

Maybe we would stand on better moral high ground if we always waited for the other guy to shoot first. That's not a lot of consolation to those Americans who die in that first shot.

You can afford that approach if you're the Lone Ranger, and you know the bad guy's first shot will always miss, and that you can always unerringly shoot the gun out of the other guy's hand without killing him.

That's not real life.

Now, one could make a case that it would have been a lot easier to simply annihilate Iraq, and it would have accomplished the same strategic goal of eliminating a dangerous enemy.

We've chosen to try and recreate Iraq into a free nation. Might work. Might not. God knows it will cost a lot more American lives and money than raining fission bombs from the edge of space would have, and God knows we are getting no credit around the world for taking this harder course. But it's worth a shot, don't you think?