Iran... ok, now we have a problem.

[DanaC]

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and Hussein was merely a misunderstood dictator who had to be brutal to his people in order to keep the country together.

The two do not equate. Nobody tried to sell the action in Yugoslavia as a response to the threat they posed, or their role in 9/11. The Bush administration did try to sell action in Iraq as a response to the threat they supposedly posed and their supposed role in 9/11.

Also both Milosevic and Hussein were total unmitigated bastards, who oppressed their people and made the lives of those who disagreed with them difficult or entirely untenable. That's not the point. If international law recognised dictatorship as a valid reason for invading and occupying a country we would have far more wars than we currently do. If the invasion had happened directly after Kuwait, it could have been justified imo.....if it had happened directly after the gassing of the Kurds it could have been justified (soon as someone uses the genocide word, international law allows for action). If the assistance which had been offered to the opposition in Iraq had actually been forthcoming when they attempted to overthrow their dictator, that would have been entirely justified, as that would have been assisting the people in their own self-determination.

The invasion of Iraq was not in any of these circumstances, the invasion of Iraq was an opportunist move by a president and administration who deemed it useful to America to do so.