He needed to follow up the Iraq war by destabilizing the Iran regime, and helping with its overthrow. It was ripe for that, so long as Americans didn’t invade. Instead, Bush focused on Iraq, and didn’t retaliate when Iran killed American soldiers on a daily basis. Ridiculous. If that was the plan, he should have just killed Saddam, replaced him with a Baath stooge of our own, and left town to leave the Iraqis and Iranians to kill each other.
Why even bother to kill Saddam? Should have had the Saudis pay him $100 Billion to attack Iran (again).