Four Reasons to Invade Iraq

My journalistic hero, Thomas Friedman, has another skillfully composed argument on Middle East politics, specifically on the reasons America invaded Iraq.

It's really uncomfortable when he lists what he calls the real reason (not to be confused with the right, moral, or stated reasons) that we invaded was because "after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured... The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house...smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government...got the message."

You'll have to read the article to get the other three reasons - the reasons that didn't motivate us.