An unnecessary war.(Iraq War, 2003)

One by one, the rationales put forward by the Bush administration and its allies for the Iraq War have collapsed. Nasty as it was, Saddam's regime never posed a threat to the United States--as the Bush administration admitted in January 2001. No operational contacts existed between Baghdad and al-Qaeda. There is no evidence that by March 2003, when the invasion began, Saddam possessed any weapons of mass destruction, let alone the huge arsenal attributed to him.

Even prior to the invasion, President Bush and his supporters had sought to reframe the issue by describing the military campaign as a war of liberation: Saddam had to be removed in order to install a "democratic" government. Radio personality Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Bush's most energetic and least persuasive shills, digested that argument into an incessantly repeated sound bite: "The world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power."

Given that Saddam is being replaced by a revolutionary Shi'ite regime aligned with Iran, Hannity's assertion is not obviously true. Even if it were, however, it still wouldn't justify the war, which has devoured the lives of thousands of American and allied troops, and tens of thousands of Iraqis--since Saddam was willing to leave in order to prevent the invasion.

"Deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead ...