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As a supporter of the action in Iraq, I am dismayed by the poor advocacy of the action by the Bush Administration. John McCain (who isn't the President- yet) always did a better job articulating the reasons for the war and the dangers of what could happen if things fell apart.

The fact that all we can do now is point acrimonious fingers back and forth is a tragedy that saps our national unity. I hope we can get it back.

There is still some dispute over whether Iraq had direct ties to al-Qaida. Is it definite that Iraqi intelliegence officers met with al-Qaida planners in Indonesia and Prague? No. Wholly disproven to my satisfaction? No -- not when Czech intelligence stands by their story.

Regardless, it is pretty much without dispute that the late "al-Qaida in Iraq" leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, joined bin Laden in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. He was injured in Afghanistan fighting U.S. troops and sought treatment in Baghdad, a city in which nothing happened without the dictator Saddam's notice and approval. Zarqawi also operated terrorists camps in Northern Iraq. While that was a no-fly zone for Saddam, he still exerted a modicum of control on the ground.

Anyway, I don't want to get into the weeds on that stuff. (And let's not even get into how Saddam's WMD might have been spirited to Syria before the invasion.) For the moment, let's just cite an excerpt from story in the May 2002 Atlantic Monthly by Mark "Black Hawk Down" Bowden -- a consistent critic of the invasion of Iraq -- titled "Tales of the Tyrant."

[Saddam] told [Major Sabah Khalifa Khodada, a career officer in the Iraqi army] and the others that they were the best men in the nation, the most trusted and able. That was why they had been selected to meet with him, and to work at the terrorist camps where warriors were being trained to strike back at America. The United States, he said, because of its reckless treatment of Arab nations and the Arab people, was a necessary target for revenge and destruction. American aggression must be stopped in order for Iraq to rebuild and to resume leadership of the Arab world. Saddam talked for almost two hours. Khodada could sense the great hatred in him, the anger over what America had done to his ambitions and to Iraq. Saddam blamed the United States for all the poverty, backwardness, and suffering in his country. (emphasis added)

We can argue about "lies" or "misrepresentations" or "mistakes" until we're red and blue in the face. But it is clear that in a post-9/11 world -- in which bin Laden hoped to kill tens of thousands in the WTC, not the 3,000 he did -- that what we thought we knew about Saddam's WMD (but certainly knew about his regime and aims against America) was too great a threat to let fester.

Iraq war critics tend to argue in a geo-political vacuum, but it is important to see the invasion in context. If we had backed down after being poised to strike, the entire U.N. "containment" regime would have certainly collapsed; it was starting to already. Saddam would then have begun, unmolested by the "international community," plotting and executing his revenge against America. And we could not bet our national security and the safety of potentially millions of innocents that a man who used WMD against his own people would not use them against us -- either through his own terrorists, or al-Qaida who shared his same fantastic resentments.

End of story, as far as I'm concerned.