“The basic issue in Iraq today is that the guy who was most effective at dealing with insurgent groups like ISIS was Saddam Hussein, not George W. Bush.”
For sure...but he also was serious about building up WMDs. In fact, he’d be alive and in power, except for those WMDs.
The problem was, I think, that we, for some crazy reason, thought he could be replaced with a functioning democracy. We needed to install his clone...or even re-install him, after taking the country and making sure it was clean WMD-wise.
We seemed to understand that during the Cold War. Ferdinand Marcos may have been a bastard when he ran the Philippines, but he was OUR BASTARD. But now we forget and seem to go back to a Jimmy Carter viewpoint...if the person isn’t perfect (like the Shah), then dump him and who cares what comes next.
Any national leader with half a brain is "serious about building up WMDs." As time goes on they become essential to a country's survival.