The self-justifying war in Iraq

It's become a cliché to point out the way that our failure in Iraq is used to justify the need for a continued presence in Iraq (we have to stay to clean up the mess we created), but I still can't let this line from President Bush yesterday pass without comment:

“Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: Al Qaeda and Iran,” Mr. Bush said.

It's enough to make anyone shrill. If Iran was such a dire threat, why did we invade Iraq? Also, Iran is a threat in Iraq precisely because we took out Iran's principal rival in the region and created a security vacuum in Iraq that opened the door for Iran's Shiite allies to gain influence. Finally, the Al Qaeda claim is misleading on multiple levels. The group wasn't in Iraq before the war and Al Qaeda in Iraq is (a) only loosely allied with the terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden and (b) a small part of the insurgency.

Comments

[David]

Brendan, Iraq is not a threat to the US because we overthrew Saddam. If we had overthrown the Mullahs and left Saddam in power, then Iraq would be the greater threat. In that case, you could be asking, "If Iraq was such a dire threat, why did we invade Iran?"

The main reason Iran is a threat to us is because they're building nuclear weapons. If we had left Saddam in power, Iran would nevertheless have been building nukes.

AQI is the driving force behind the bombings and massive killings. That's why Petraeus's strategy of focusing on AQI cut the attacks the deaths to a fraction of what they had been.