They weren't wrong. The media has been running amok with this BS for a long time now.
Iraq was a threat, and only foolish persons, or those with a serious agenda that is not in accord with the current administration would promulgate such contrary notions.
Read the entire article, in case you quit early, before he makes those very points, that Iraq indeed was a threat and enumerates the reasons.
It really is a very good article.
They were wrong? Based on what? Politicians? The fact is we don't know what all is buried in the sand over there and what happened to the known chemical WMDs.
"Was the war justified?
The answer is: Unequivocally yes.
The Rockefellers and John Kerrys of the world suggest that only a discovery of large WMD stockpiles would make it right to have ousted Saddam.
But among many other reasons were:
* Saddam had flouted 17 U.N. resolutions and the terms of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) cease-fire. He repeatedly tried to shoot down U.S. warplanes in the no-fly zone. America would have been justified in resuming the Gulf War much earlier on that basis alone.
* Saddam had been a regional menace for 20 years, having instigated two wars. He continued to make threats against his neighbors even after the Gulf War. His ultimate goal: to dominate the region — and its output of oil.
This would have given him virtually unlimited resources for his evil projects.
* Saddam had provided safe haven for terrorists, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Palestinian with ties to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
Zarqawi is said to be behind the murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, prior to the war. Today, he is believed responsible for numerous attacks and beheadings in Iraq.
* Saddam had reached out to and supported terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He paid the families of suicide bombers $25,000 apiece.
* Saddam milked the Oil-for-Food program for at least $10 billion for his own use — apparently corrupting the United Nations (news - web sites) at the highest levels in the process.
* He clearly flouted U.N. rules on conventional weapons, like ballistic missiles.
* And, of course, he had persecuted his own people for years, committing horrid atrocities — rape, torture, mass murder, not to mention political repression. He killed thousands with chemical weapons.
Among the most vital reasons for war was the need, post-9/11, to show the world's outlaws, from Saddam to bin Laden and beyond, that civilized nations would no longer ignore terror. "