Saddam was an evil dictator, but he was a secular evil dictator who kept the Iranis and the Sunni Al Qaeda militants in their place
Us putting troops in Saudi arabia was the justification used for 9/11
If we had let Saddam keep Kuwait, he would have threatened the Saudis and prevented the Saudis giving money to train Wahabbis all over the world (he would have grabbed the money for himself) and Saddam would have gone back to his real aim -- to kick the living s*** out of the Iranis
With the oil money, he could have done this, slaughtering thousands of Irani Shia fanatics (like he did in the Iran-Iraq war)
It also meant that we started paying money and attention to the Pakis again (due to Afghanistan) instead of them just breaking up.
In hindsight, we should have stayed the heck out of that -- GWI leads directly to 9/11, GWII and the Afghanistan involvement.
I agree. In hindsight, we should have just cut a quiet deal with Saddam and bought our oil from him rather than the corrupt Kuwaitis or the Wahhabi Saudis. Kuwait was just not worth the trouble it ultimately wrought, and neither was Saudi Arabia. And he could have used all of that oil money to continue pummeling the Iranians.