“What has changed in Iraq?”
One of the points necessary for a “Just War” is that it will not cause more harm than it will end. Has Iraq experienced less harm or more harm since we invaded in 2003? Quite frankly things are much worse there than under Hussein. Hussein was boxed in in 2003 and could only hurt his own people and he was not nearly as bad in that regard as ISIS is.
“ISIS is more open in its’ brutality, but are they any more brutal?”
Yes. Hussein never really targeted entire peoples merely because of who they were. As long as people cooperated with him he didn’t bother them.
Really? Ever heard of the Kurds.
‘As long as people cooperated with him he didn’t bother them.’
The same is true for ISIS. If you cooperate by converting to Islam or leaving they will not cut your head off and put it on a pike.
Things where significantly better under the occupation and the status of forces agreement hashed out by the GWB administration. Very few people where dieing before we pulled out. The country had become if not a tourist destination, at least quite stable. There where free and fair elections, women where allowed to participate in the governance of the country and a modest peace was found in much of the country.
So I reject your argument outright as false. I also reject the opinion of the Vatican about the Iraq War of liberation. Had Saddam remained in power we have no idea what he would have done.
It is no secret that he murdered hundreds of thousands of not more than a million of his own people. His boys where every bit as brutal and would have slaughtered to stay in power.
For the dead it is of little difference as to whether the killer is a monomaniacal despot or a religious zealot, The outcome is the same.