Reply #3: "as much as we went ... Democratic Iraq"?

[neoblues]

They went to ensure stable, uninterrupted (and therefore stable/less expensive) oil supplies (also satisfying *'s lust for power and revenge). Providing Democracy to IRAQIs was an afterthought--a useful excuse when no WMD's were found, as well as potentially helpful in terms of maintaining a long term presence. So, it was useful and may have been a part of whatever skimpy plan they had scrawled on the back of a napkin... but the oil aspect dwarfs it.

If there's anything funny, in an ironic way, about this, it's watching Republicans discover the limitations of their original thinking. They thought "what good is it being the world's biggest, baddest, power--if we can't just go take what we want? it's simple, we just flex our muscles--it won't take much, a week or two at the most--and the IRAQI's will kiss our feet for freeing them!". So they tried it and found out why it wasn't so simple after all.