Could you imagine what the middle-east would look like if Saddam had stayed in power? We would probably have 2 nuclear power wannabees to deal with instead of one — besides the WMD program that Saddam would surely have restarted as soon as the inspectors left; the Duelfer report suggested as much. Imagine, Ahmedinijad would claim he needed nuclear weapons as a defense against Saddam. Now he says he doesn’t need them — that is still a lie as it concerns his intentions but he could publicly rationalize it with more support. What a mess. So I agree, any rational world leader would have had to consider what they knew then in 2002 and 2003 and what the probabilities in the future looked like and could only conclude that Saddam had to go. It was a good and needed start.
