This is the unspoken (by most) truth of the Bush Doctrine as applied to the WOT. Iraq has always been meant to be the lauching pad, if needed, against Iran and possibly other Mid-east tyrannies. How anyone can not see the obviousness of the strategy is always a mystery to me. (The Mid-eastern countries see it well enough).
And many dont want to realize that Saddam was our proxy and many nations proxy when he fought and killed millions of Iranians. Not pretty. But those are the facts. We have not been sitting back and watching Iran do what it wanted for years. We were doing the best we could logisitically until Saddam morphed into a nutty tyrant. His mental breakdown was probably based in part on his failure to beat Iran. Deans mental breakdown is also probably based in part on the dimwits failure to beat the republicans.
Yup...That's the way i've always seen it. The sole reason for being there actually.