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I could name a dozen countries with equal or worse human rights records. We invaded Iraq to eliminate its WMD. Failure to find WMD is a problem.

It took the first UNSCOM group over two years to find the evidence they got (see UN website) with lots of informant derived leads.

As for the "why Iraq and not (insert despotic regime here) question: I can only say that every journey begins with but a single step. Most of the countries you might think of usually screw over their own citizens within their own borders, until they collapse of their own weight, and the leaders loot the country and go to live in France. Iraq is a special case, as it controls a large portion of the planet's oil reserves, which we do have to care about since the greenie weenies and their Dem accomplices won't let us go after our own oil. That, and a demostrated willingness to use the WMDs he had, and a deep desire to reclaim the "lost provinces" of Iraq, which Hussein seems to think included most of the Middle East.

Bottom line: we can't go after all of them at once, but a few examples can go a long way towards making other dictators toe the line at minimum. WMDs or not, the humanitarian aspects of the liberation make it all worthwhile.

You make a cogent argument SpineyNorman, but it only is persuasive because it is made after the fact. If Colin Powell had argued that we should invade Iraq because Saddam was a dictator, and merely that, then there would have been little support for the war since dictators are a dime a dozen. The real problem facing the administration if there are no WMD's is that either the intelligence community is shown to be inept or untruthful, and/or the administration is shown to be the same. They must find WMD's or the Bush administration's credibility will be lost at least somewhat in the states and for sure abroad. While no one can now question our military prowess or our willingness to take casualties, our credibility is in serious question. And we have a war on terrorism that must be vigorously conducted with the help of most of the rest of the world. We need that credibility with our future allies. I, for one, am praying that we soon turn up those WMD's, or we may find ourselves isolated and abandoned in the war on terrorism.