Readers are smart

This email from Hugh's reader/listener Ed strongly asserts and explains pretty clearly, something I've said for two years about the decision to go to war in Iraq. It was never as simple as WMD's:

Thomas Ricks perceives that Iraq is "better off" since the the resumption of hostilities because Saddam was a bad guy. He questions (one might conclude he doubts), however, whether this action was in the security interests of the US. He supports his position by the apparent containment of Iraq and the failure to find WMDs. Since the primary public justification for hostilities was the threat of WMDs, Ricks's position carries water with those who opposed that assertion. This position, however, ignores the larger context. Unfortunately, defenders of the overthrow of the "Iraqi regime" persist in stressing the WMD issue, which, while somewhat reasonable, is insufficient and easily contestable, as in Ricks's assertion about the doubts raised about their existence. The more complete argument is harder to make in a simple way (even this extended missive is but a brief precis) but much harder to refute. To do so, dissenters tend to revert to malicious motivations (or stupidity) on the part of the president or other conspiratorial explanations.

Read in it's entirety and you see how Ed got to these conclusions.