The Secret History of the Iraq War (Repost)

Had it not been for the bravery, commitment, professionalism, and resilience of America's fighting forces, the United States would have suffered an embarrassing debacle in its war against Saddam Hussein's regime. His Iraq was a developing country emaciated by a previous destructive war, a decade of debilitating sanctions, and popular discontent. This kind of war, which found a uniquely mighty superpower embroiled in the Middle Eastern quicksand, need not have happened.
There is no doubt that America had a viable, urgent imperative to go to war against Iraq when it did. The primary reason was the ongoing cooperation between Saddam Hussein's intelligence services and Osama bin Laden's terrorists, which began in earnest in the early 1990s when the ji-hadist forces in Somalia, under the command of Ayman al-Zawahiri, received extensive military assistance from the Iraqis via Sudan. That alliance was solidified in 1998-99, as Saddam and bin Laden realized that they needed each other's resources in order to confront the United States. Moreover, Iraq (working in conjunction with Yasser Arafat) had resolved to throw the Middle East into chaos—a move that threatened to imperil the vital interests of America and its allies. The war Saddam Hussein contemplated, which included the use of weapons of mass destruction, would have caused inestimable damage to the global economy by disrupting energy supplies from the Persian Gulf.