and borders on every potentially hostile country in the mideast, it had a butcher for a leader hated by his neighbors and his people, and it was militarily a pushover. An American puppet state there would have driven a stake into the heart of the Arab world and been a perfect counter to Iran. We invaded Iraq because it was easy and it was cheap and because there was a big payoff.

We invaded that country for purely strategic reasons, it was economically and militarily convenient for us to do so, and our reasons for doing so were either outright lies or stupidity and incompetence of Biblical proportions. Going to war for any reason other than self-defense is naked aggression. Period.

This is the third time the USA has commited the crime of aggression: the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War were the other two. But at least we got something out of those.