To destroy Saddam's arsenal of WMD and prevent him from sharing those weapons with his contacts in al queda, hamas, hezbollah, et. al. To prevent him from continuing his work on developing a nuclear device, and thus become another North Korea. And as a side benefit, we get to feel warm and fuzzy about taking out a brutal, maniacal dictator that has people's tongues cut out for dissent and tortures children in front of their parents for sport.
Just what lasting impact will it serve?
Elimination of the threats to our people and the rest of the world as described above. The establishment of a democratic (eventually) regime in Iraq that will become the staging point for other democratic revolutions in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the rest of that den of tin-pot dictators.
Just because you do not have WMD, doesn't mean that you can't still kill a lot of people in some other sort of terrorist attack.
Uh-huh. True. What's your point? That's a total non-sequitor.
As are almost all of the so called "reasons" from the anti-Bush, anti-American protestors.