The Bush administration sent us to Iraq citing several threats that Iraq posed to the United States. These threats focused primarily on the capacity of Iraq to directly threaten the United States, via nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. These potential threats turned out to be entirely incorrect.

The issue of whether Saddam Hussein is a good guy or not is not the subject of debate. No one argues that Saddam "should" be in power. However, if unpleasant governments were the primary criteria for going to war, we'd be at war with many countries, such as North Korea, Burma, Sudan, Iran, and so on.

We have invested significant resources to win in Iraq that could have been better used elsewhere. We were already in the middle of reconstruction of Afghanistan. We could be spending our money on homeland security, and the broader international issues of anti-terrorism, focusing on countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria. That's not even including other issues, such as Sudan, China and Taiwan, Kashmir, Israel, and Burma.

Our ally Pakistan has contributed more to future threats to the United States than Iraq by many degrees. Khan, a hero in Pakistan and the founding father of Pakistan's nuclear program, was revealed to have sold the technology to North Korea.

Bush said in the first debate that his administration brought the Khan network to justice. How can that be true? Pakistan pardoned Khan the day after he publically admitted his crimes. The United States has not had access to Khan or any of his associates. How is that justice? How is that protecting the United States against nuclear weapons? North Korea has nuclear technology because of Khan.

Afghanistan was directly related to the war on terror in the United States. North Korea is directly related to the threat of nuclear proliferation. Syria and Iran are directly related to chemical weapon proliferation. But these countries are safely in the zone of diplomacy.

Perhaps it is safe to say that Iraq was targetted specifically because it posed no threat. Iraq clearly wanted to be a threat, but none-the-less it wasn't. Iraq is a much easier country to invade than Syria, Iran, or North Korea. One thousand Americans killed is a very small price to pay, when considering the cost of invading any of these countries. Compared to the cost of any modern invasion, the invasion of Iraq has been practically bloodless, at least for Allied troops. However, Iraqi civilians are suffering far more than our soldiers.

If I can't trust the government and its intelligence apparatus to make fairly accurate assessments of threats and to deal with them appropriately, I certainly cannot be expected to trust the government to tell me which countries are right to invade.