I was under the impression we were discussing what we do now, not what we should have done three years ago. If we're changing tracks, I can deal with it.

Assume that Bush had decided not to take military action in Iraq.

Where would we be now?

- Sanctions would either be continuing, with starving Iraqis, no-fly zones, and the oil money being funnelled to Saddam and his bribe recipients around the world. Or maybe the sanctions would be dropped by now. If so, both Kay and Duelfer's reports agreed firmly on one point: Saddam had every intention of resuming his weapons programs when the heat was off.

Iran, on Iraq's border, would still be trying to build nuclear weapons. Their program long preceded the Iraq invasion. Are we to assume that Saddam would be just fine with this, and decide that WMD is the furthest thing from his mind?

At that point, the only thing standing between Iraq and a resumed weapons research program would be the U.N., which is currently proving how well it can stop a bomb program by wringing its hand at Iran. Maybe Saddam will decide that playing nuclear rope-a-dope will work as well for him as it does for the mullahs.

We would still have troops in Saudi Arabia, the prime reason bin Laden said al Qaeda was formed. Remember, we had no ground troops at all in Iraq or Afghanistan on 9/11

There would still be terror camps in northern Iraq, financial support of outside terrorism from Saddam, and his own personal terror groups active.

Thugs and terrorists would be pouring from Iran into occupied Afghanistan instead of Iraq in order to kill Americans. The focus of the radicals would be over there, instead. Creating terrorists.

Radical Muslims would still be furious at us for the toppling of the Taliban and routing of al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Remember, this was al Qaeda's home. Not Iraq.

Not many soldiers would be dying right now. But we would have put off an unpleasant problem for only a few more years. Another thing that all the U.S. weapons inspectors agreed on was that Iraq was not a stable situation.

A lot of people make the case that had we finished the job after the first Gulf War, a lot of grief would have been saved, and a hell of a lot of Iraqi lives. This is not really fair, of course--given the deals the U.S. made with the U.N. and other nations back then, this was not feasible.

But I think I can make a case that had we not taken care of Iraq now, it would have been even harder five or ten years down the road when military action in the Middle East became unavoidable.