Cost-Benefit of Iraq
One side of all the analysis I have not heard much about is a cost-benefit analysis of the war in Iraq. So first let's think about the goals of the action: 1. Get rid of a very bad man. 2. Make the world safer for America and Americans by a. removing weapons of mass destruction and b. removing Iraq's financing of terrorism. 3. Help secure a source of oil? 4. Send a message to the terrorists. So of those reasons, which of them would have a direct benefit to the US? Make the world safer and help secure a source of oil would certainly have a benefits. Knocking a bad guy out of office is less clear. Sending a message to the terrorists would also be a good thing. So, if those are in fact true, what would be the value of those? If in fact Iraq had had WMDs, what was the danger to the US? Saddam certainly did not have the means to deliver significant WMDs to the US, so that has very limited direct value. Iraq appears to have been a relatively minor player in world terrorism, so that d...