If the original reason we were going to defy the UN (and the opinion of about 95%+ of the world) was to liberate the Iraqi people from an evil dictator then that would be another story. I'm sure Congress at that time would have debated the value of sending a number of our soldiers to their deaths, the expense, the general impact on a weakened economy, along with the important question of why that particular dictatorship? Especially when there are so many other oppressed people in the world like, for instance, a little island 90 miles off the Florida coast, with a full-fledged, certified Commie dictator for close to 45 years. I suspect that Congress, including many members of Pres. Bush's own party, would have resisted or refused such a "liberation" cause. And try as we might (even with the flimsiest of evidence) we couldn't link Saddam to the evil-doers of Al-Queda, so by default the unifying cry was Weapons of Mass Destruction. And that Saddam not only had them in abundance, but their use against America was practically imminent. Now that's a cause no truly patriotic person could ever deny!! So this is not about freeing a group of suppressed people, this is about the reason we went to war.
Noam Chomsky gave a talk this last thursday evening entitled "Iraq And The U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy" that covered this whole business, including the historical precedents and the true reasons for everything that's going on vs. the purported reasons. In fact, I think Chomsky is scheduled to be on CSPAN2 today (sunday) perhaps you'll be able to find his appearance there and hear some of this stuff for yourself. To try to sum up his entire talk in a sentence or two, basically his message is that the United States has had this ongoing policy since at least 1947 of needing to squash anyone who dares to defy the dominant position of the United States. This is what Kennedy staged the Bay Of Pigs invasion for, not because Castro was evil and torturing people, but because he represented self-determination of Cuba's affairs by Cuba, right in our own hemisphere, in our own backyard. This is why Reagan had to squash the Nicaraguan solidarity movement by supporting, training, and arming the Contras. The Reagan administration supported and armed Saddam Hussein. They wanted to squash Iran (and still do) for the same reasons. The United States supported the Shah of Iran, who tortured his own people probably far more than Saddam did his, and when Iran overthrew the "evil" Shah who practiced widespread oppression of his own people including torture, the United States backed Saddam Hussein to try to squash the Iranian self-determination movement. Why did we go to war in Iraq (again)? Not because they had weapons they were going to use on us. That was just a pretext. Not to bring freedom to the Iraqi people and end their torturing. That's just an after-the-fact pretext (post-text?). The real reasons for this war were 1. Iraq has the world's second largest reserves of oil 2. War distracts everyone from what is and isn't happening within this country 3. Fostering a national mentality of fear and paranoia allows many abuses, including stomping the Bill Of Rights into the ground (USA PATRIOT Act and pending PATRIOT Act 2) We support and always have supported dictatorships around the world that systematically practice torture on their own peoples. Including Saddam Hussein.
There was never any question that we would win this war. It's precisely because Iraq was the weakest country in the region that they were chosen to be the subject of our attack. Yeah, the "others" get shit done. No need for quotation marks around the word shit even. When you get enough older to realize that you have not in 2003 gotten enough older to actually consider that you have really gotten older, you may begin to see things in a more realistic and less gullible way.