I love how responses from the right-wing media lackeys are now nuanced in hypotheticals, because obviously the example of Iraq is no longer a textbook example of how you're supposed to conduct a pre-emptive war. No need to look at hypotheticals, just connect the dots between the REAL terrorists, the means of waging attacks against American interests, the resources needed to support a terrorist infrastructure, and the implementation mechanisms, and Iraq was just a cursory player in the grand scheme of things and already contained. The connections with Saudi Arabia and 9/11 were far more direct than anything emanating from Iraq, and Pakistan has had a significant role in getting nuclear weapons materials into the hands of rogue states (at the least), yet they are conspicuously absent from the so-called axis of evil and PNAC's hitlist (I'd love to see what the Office of Special Plans is cooking up about Syria and Iran). $120 billion so far and countless resources on the ground diverted away from keeping Afghanistan stable and taking out Al Qaeda, I see a pretty poor return on investment if the whole notion of pre-emptive war in Iraq was to keep us safe from terrorists. If anything, at its very worst, Iraq was not pre-emptive war so much as manifest destiny, where the target was already picked out (don't need Paul O'Neill to tell us this, some of Bush's stump speeches in 2000 were already playing up the need to take Saddam out by force) and the justification fabricated to fit the desired outcome.