Presidential Debate

[Medicine Man]

I think if this war was linked to fighting the global war on terrorism, then that linkage needed to be made clearer.  What is hard to do is to imagine what the world would be facing now if Saddam had not been ousted.  UN Sanctions, corrupted, failed and lifted, a possible nest for Zarqawi's group in league with Iraqi Intelligence, and the renewal of WMD research and development.
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Emphasis is mine.

I have to dispute just one thing in this statement. Any idea that there was going to be cooperation between Zarqawi, Bin Laden or any other fundamentalist movement and Saddam Hussein is complete fantasy. The alleged links between the two have been discredited many times in print and recently have been refuted in the media as well -- by some of the people who pushed the whole theory in the first place, no less. Additionly, a Saddam-Al Qaida partnership was wildly implausible to begin with. Saddam, monster that he was, was nevertheless an obstacle to the express goals of Al-Qaida -- the foremost of which is the overthrow of secular governments in the Middle East. The Butcher of Bagdad was unlikely to provide advanced killing tools to his enemies.

My opinion: Removing Saddam was one of the undisputedly good things that has come from this invasion. The other is the removal of international sanctions on Iraq. Unfortunately, both of these benefits will be a cold comfort to the US if the country ends up paying the price for the Administration's sloppy execution of the post-war occupation.