Londoner you sanctimonious meatpie
I noticed you completely bailed and didn't even the quote the part where I explained about the exact decision that BOTH the US and GB had to make in 2001.
The CONTAINMENT WAS CRUMBLING. The choices were clear. Let the embargo end and ease Iraq back into trade -- which is what the UN inspections were clearly indicating. OR -- Remove Saddam and allow Iraq to reboot their govt.
Are you sure this was the only choice? Bush 41 and his Defense Secretary, Dick Chaney, openly declared that removing Hussein would lead to unmanageable chaos.
Perhaps the choice was between:
A) failed containment (of a terribly weakened but evil dictator)
or
B) Unmanageable chaos.
Saying that B equals "allow Iraq to reboot their gov't" seems - IMHO - as narratively simplistic as "blood for oil".
Secondly, Washington seems to have a bad track record when they say "we need to make this choice or [fill-in-the-hysteria]". Seems like both parties construct false choices whenever they need to grease a questionable or unpopular or less-than-straightforward policy. We heard this with Vietnam and the Domino Theory, yet we lost Vietnam and Hawaii didn't fall. Gore tried it with the temperature boogeyman, and of course there's TARP, which may have been necessary but certainly not in the way it was done, with a 3 page memo and no accountability (e.g., without a transparent structure for where the money would go or how credit markets would be unfrozen). If the choice is between letting government flounder through the slow death of a terrible policy or giving them vast new powers and hugely expanded budgets to do really big things in parts of the world they clearly don't understand, I would plug my nose and vote for the former.
Anyway, if you want to see a pretty detailed, historically dense analysis of how very real threats are propogandized into very bad policies, take a look at "Washington's China".
Washington's China: the national ... - James Peck - Google Books
The book goes over the atmosphere in the Cold War state department. Take note of how one group of ascendant bureaucrats tries to sell their interpretation of China - complete with extremely dubious intelligence on China's involvement in a vast network of evil-doing. Had we taken them as seriously as we took the "failed containment" hysteria of Wolfie, Kagan, Kristol, Libby, Chaney, Rummy et al -
and trust me the 1940's NSC folks made a case against China that makes Hussein look like a bunny rabbit - than our bankruptcy would have come much sooner, and Walmart would be stuck with American manufacturing.
You might be right about the necessary choice, but I'm skeptical, considering the source, which includes both parties.