As someone who served in Saudi Arabia during the "wonderful" Clinton years, protecting those poor rich oil sheiks from Saddam and his minions, while Al Qeada tried to kill us there, and Ole Bubba did nothing but bite his lip and look sad while Monica came over for more servicing, I'd say FINALLY taking out Iraq was the right thing.
Saddam had been a serious thorn in our side and a DIRECT threat to Middle East peace, whether the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, conflict with Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Kurds, etc, etc, for the last two decades. After 9/11, the whole dynamic changed. We could not, repeat, not wait to be hit first. If Saddam had WMD's, and everyone thought he did, I did, REAL Colonels I worked for did, Generals did, Clinton administration types did, the Russians, Germans and French did (I think they KNEW, and removed them, but that's another story), the Brits knew, the CIA knew.... Anyway, war on, war over... no weapons. Still, and most importantly we removed a great threat to us and we are, in the long run, safer.
Say we didn't go to war. We left Saddam in place. The UN failed to find weapons. Now in this scenario, we still have sanctions in place. The Oil for Food program's still going on and still being scammed. The Left is clamoring for us to END the sanctions. The Leftists want Bush's head over it. 100,000 Iraqi children dying every day, month, year--whatever. We can't keep the pressure on in the UN and the sanctions are lifted. Now, here's where I put on my Nostradamus hat and do some predicting:
Saddam, with the sanctions lifted, pours his oil into the economy. Billions of $ pour into Iraq. Man, that kind of JACK can buy a lot of things. There's a bunch of happy Frenchmen and Germans just waiting to trade some "technologies" for some cash. Oh, yeah, Russia and North Korea needs cash bad, too. Yup. Now Saddam GETS his WMD. Bush finds out and leads a new charge in the UN to reinstate sanctions. Nope, every one is making too much cash, but--those nasty Americans won't get off Saddam's back. He calls his colleague Bin Laden. Offers a few items to him if he uses them in a way that gets the heat off of him while not being traceable back to Iraq. A new attack on US soil makes 9/11 look like a picnic. Maybe a 100,000 dead, two million injured, thousands more doomed to die of cancer.
We cannot, unfortunately, predict the future. We can only guess. Given the plausibility of my above scenario, I'm glad that we stopped Saddam for once and for all. The failed, repeat failed lessons of appeasement from the 1930s tell us of the dangers of not taking action. We took action. The Clinton look-the-other-way-to-attacks-on-Americans-overseas was another failure that led directly to 9/11. We took action. It was the right thing to do. It was necessary. Guys are still dieing. That really, really sucks. But still, necessary. I thank them with all my heart. I worry for them all the time. But they're doing their duty, and rightly so. Arduous and painful or not, they're there for us, right now. Let's just support them and stop trying to pull the rug out from under them right at the moment they're starting to make progress. Think about a world with one less tin horn, evil, degenerate dictator with a desire to make a big name for himself, a track record of invading other countries AND of using poison gas on his own people, of lobbing scud missiles into other countries not at war with him, and you'll realize that just maybe that world is a little bit better for it.
The Democrats would have supported continued sanctions. They've only changed that now because it's a way of bashing Bush since we invaded.
Kim Jong Il actually does have WMD. All the same arguments would apply, and yet we haven't attacked him.
I'm not saying Im' for it, but it would have made more sense.