Let me take a stab at a justification (acknowledging right up front that it IS weak, but it is more than zero): I believe that in that moment, at that time, after all the UN resolutions, after all the sanctions, after years of No-fly zones, after the Iran Iraq war, after gassing the Kurds, after Gulf War I, when he annexed Kuwait and massed troops just North of Saudi, after him going to great lengths to try to convince everyone that he had WMD, and THEN after 9/11 (try to remember how it felt when it was fresh), “we” (many of our leaders, not just neocons) just weren’t in a mood to take a chance. We wanted to experiment with pre-emptively “solving” the problem.
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He was a US strongman that became unpredictable and went rogue. I understand the policy of preemption and the rational behind it. However, to me it looks like there was ulterior motives. First and foremost, there was NO intelligence agency that thought he was a threat to anybody, but his own people. Actually Colin Powell was out in early 2000 talking about how he was a “junk yard dog with no teeth” living in constant fear. Yes, *some* thought he could *possibly* have, loosely defined, WMDs. And he liked to pretend he did as well. But so do a lot of tin pot dictators. They DID, however, completely twist facts and somebody slipped a the “Yellow Cake” charge in for good measure(I have an idea where that came from)
Sure, he was a piece of shit – but his real estate made him a powerful piece of shit.
In a sense, the precarious nature of the oil market, made him too powerful and potentially very dangerous. So, I understand the rationale behind wanting to take him out beyond what was sold beyond just monetary gain.
Still, where we stand today, is Iraq has aligned with Iran due to ethnic ties. So, even from the conspiratorial view, it did not work out. To really make it work then need to take out Iran and I highly doubt that is going to happen.
