1 That would have been the best news I would have heard all day! A well guided nuke would have been much cleaner! Now the well guided nuke will still be fairly clean!

2 If you want to read a really good series on alternate history, than you should read Harry Turtledove's look at his book "How Few Remain" which chronicles what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. This book is followed by the "Greatwar" trilogy where the US has allied itself with Germany against the Confederacy, England, France, Russia and Canada in an alternate version of WW1. This series is followed in-turn by the "Worldwar" where the Confederacy is governed by a right-wing dictator (ala Adolf Hitler)who plots revenge against the Confederacy loss in the previous series, terrorism is Canada against the US occupiers and the US is the victim of a surprise attack. Absolutely a great read.

3 "Uday and Qusay would still be getting laid regularly" Is this what you anti-libertarians call RAPE?

4 Wow, a counterfactual history in which EVERYTHING goes worse. That's really credible. Shoot, I've read counters by professional historians in which Hitler wins, and even those don't have uniformly bad consequences (for example, Stalin gets slaughtered). You seem to think that if we hadn't invaded Iraq, Afghanistan becomes a disaster. I couldn't disagree more. Take a fraction of the billions we spent in Iraq so far, and put it in Afghanistan, a much poorer country to start with, and take a fraction of the troops we have put in Iraq, and guarantee security outside Kabul. Also, remember that the western alliance wouldn't have been blown apart by the war in Iraq, so we would have even more assistance in Afghanistan than we do today. My guess is, Afghanistan becomes a Muslim paradise, an example to the entire region. Uzbekis, Kirghiz, Tajiks, Turkomenis, all begin to hope for a US invasion. And Iranians, too. Instead, they look at Iraq and Afghanistan, and say--this is what Democracy looks like. Seriously, read Assassin's Gate, Bluto. It's an amazing book about how we blew it in Iraq. It is full of unbelievable stories at the ground level. For example, the professional military in Kirkuk, without input from the CPA, was doing a much better job of reconstruction, BECAUSE they weren't waiting for Bremer and his slow money and micromanaging. Things really went to hell when the military got replaced by CPA and contractors (the "experts").

5 Oh, just for clarification--I did not mean to write a full counterfactual, so that's why there are no negatives from NOT invading Iraq. In fact, I think there would have been some negatives from not invading Iraq: 1. Possibility that Saddam would one day develop WMD, and provide them to terrorists. 2. continued suffering of Iraqi people under his brutal regime. 3. Minor to medium threat of Saddam to his neighbors (his military was still pretty weak, and I doubt it, but it was a minor possibility). There were reasons to go into Iraq. They just didn't outweigh the myriad reasons NOT to go into Iraq.

6 jd, you're too young to remember it, but you might find reading about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan instructive. Some basic military tactical and strategic history would undoubtedly be useful for you, as well. I'll see your "Muslim paradise" (snicker, good one, jd) and raise you three now liberated Muslim countries, that while not paradises, are on far better and more promising roads than they were. And that trumps our decades of doing nothing productive in the Middle East.

7 I think Afghanistan is better off. I'm not so sure about Iraq. The good straussians that laid the intellectual foundations for this war could tell us that Hobbes was right about human nature--we prefer even a brutal, monstrous government to a non-existent one. If it ends up better off, then five years of suffering will be worth it. But I'm not convinced that we have created a better situation. We'll see, I guess. but my point about the counterfactual stands. Good ones look at the up and the down side. There are almost none of them that are unvarnished good or bad, because there are almost no absolutely awful or perfectly marvelous turning points in history. Most of what I know about the Afghan war(s) comes from Imperial Hubris. I do recommend it--it's an excellent primer on modern Afghan history.

8 if yankee dog nation didn't invade iraq in 03' G.W. masters in tehran would've fired his little wannabe texan posterior. Since G.W. succeded the throne , abdul has noticed that all of iran's enemies are being clobbered. Saddam's iraq is now an iranian mini-me state. The taliban have been sent back to the farms to bother the sheep. Al-qaeda, which used to blow up the occasional mosque in iran, is now either cave diving in pakistan or getting a tan in Gitmo. The syrians have been forced out of leb , leaving the iranians as the sole power there. Hamas has been allowed to assume power in palestine. And remember all options are on table including allowing the iranians to go nuclear. The u.s. has become a tool.

9 jd, I think the only argument against your point is that we shouldn't do too much for them, but show them how to do it themselves. Which is what's being done. Sure, we could have thrown more troops into Afghanistan and left Iraq out of the picture, but that often creates an atmosphere of dependency. It's a blanace that has been difficult to achieve. And many still argue that balance. Your obvious "what ifs" are mostly correct. But you forgot one thing - Saddam had too many other players in his pockets; Russia, France, etc. He had enablers, very powerful enablers. We expect Iran to be subversive, and they've not disappointed us, but not a liberal democracy like France or a country like Russia who on the one side is still in the reformation stage and on the other side quietly keeping the autocracy alive. They had to be exposed as much as Saddam needed to be deposed. But this is just another opinion of mine. And you know how opinionated I am ;-)