There was plenty of fighting going on in Iraq after the 2004 election. We had the means and the motives to do something meaningful against Iran, particularly since they were the ones supplying the insurgents. We wouldn't have had to be overt, like sending tanks across the border, but we could have definitely given a little something back to Iran. Why did we do nothing about the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism (the Obama and Biden administrations hadn't come along yet) after we had just removed the counterbalance to that state? It's a serious question and one that has always bothered me.
The home of terrorism Saudi Arabia (15 of 19 9/11 hijackers) but Saudi Arabia too wealthy and powerful in 2001.
So the narrative has to be Iran is the bad guy the USA ended up enlisting the followers of Saudi citizen Bin Laden the grassroots Muslims to fight the Libyan and Syrian wars in 2011.
Those wars part of the endgame of the Neocons to take out Iran and create a new Saudi-Israeli Middle East bathed in cash with a Palestinian state on Jewish lands.
Thinking in simple terms, I felt at the time we should have turned left to finish off Syria, then right to dismanntle Iran.
We had pretty much our whole army in the Middle East. Rather than use it, Bush literally put our tanks in garages in Iraq.
Our enemies were cowering, but when they realized Bush was going no further, they began picking pff our troops in Iraq.