Shia Iran was surreptitiously helping us against the Sunni Al-quaeda (as were the Syrians), and Iran was a useful counter to Iraq. Things were working out fine for us in the MidEast until the Bush Baby's Axis of Evil speech, which left half our allies in that part of the world flabbergasted at our sudden pivot.

No, we attacked Iraq to appease our Saudi and Israeli allies, not the specific geopolitical reasons you bring up. However, the strategic imperatives you allude to worked in spades in Iraq, and, as Mr Cheney smugly remarked, they would be forced to underwrite their own defeat and occupation.

We wound up involved in a futile nation-building exercise in both countries, right in the middle of the most fanatically religious, tribally divided and batshit crazy part of the world. In Afghanistan, after we had made our point we could have easily withdrawn and saved face. In Iraq we boutght it, and now we held the mortgage. We had very good reasons to attack Afghanistan, both to get the real bad guys, and to demonstrate our ability to punish agressors and deter others.

It was the most colossal foreign policy blunder in American history. Perhaps it was simply a result of bad intelligence (although I sincerely doubt that). Yhis has Neocon stench all over it. I'm convinced they lied about WMDs because they wanted to do invade anyway. Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding, but the way they tried to cover their ass afterwards convinces me it was all lies.

We may never fully recover.