Most Iraqi people don't seem to be sorry that the old regime is gone, though they want understandably US and others out as soon as possible.

Imo pre-emptively taking Saddam's regime out before he could produce or buy WMDs was a good thing, especially considering that his sons seemed to be even more sadistic than Saddam himself and would have eventually inherited the power.

What we know for sure is that this pre-emptive action cannot be justified by the arguments that US-UK presented. Unless they had foretellers guiding them.

Yeah, I'm sure in 100 years someone will come up with a conspiracy theory which claims that 9/11 never happened...

There is just one small problem with that. More recent information stated that the oceans are continuing to have plant and animal matter die, sink, and make more oil. I cannot find an internet reference to that. Anyone able to quote a source stating something either way?

I don't think the reason was purely economic.. After all the war was also economically a huge risk: if things had gone wrong, and Iraq for example had had WMDs launching them to Israel, the whole situation could have broken into real bad and unstable chaos in the middle east, which would have had really long economical consequencies.

Personally I think there are many many reasons, starting from highly personal reasons to security concerns and economical reasons. Personally I think that there wouldn't have been war is Gore had won the elections.
If Bush regime had only economics in mind, it was hell of a risky business.. and even now when everything went fast, it will take a loooooong time until Bush can say even privately that the economical benefits from the succesful operation have covered the expenses.

And links, my friend?
I could give you a couple of links to websites that state that 64k WMA is CD-quality.
Links mean nothing. Only your reasoning matters.

Who said it was a funny thread?   

Ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and against Iraq's Kurdish population in 1988. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war left 150,000 to 340,000 Iraqis and 450,000 to 730,000 Iranians dead.

And links, my friend?
I could give you a couple of links to websites that state that 64k WMA is CD-quality.
Links mean nothing. Only your reasoning matters.

With this war the US administration managed to place US military basis in Russia's former sphere of influence. They can also lower the price of oil in order to weak the OPEC influence.

And they always knew that the chances of having profit with this war were much higher than the other way around.

No chemical or biological weapons were found. That takes away any credibility to the claims about Iraq being an immediate thread to the US.

"There is no doubt that the military occupation of such an important oil-exporting country is creating cracks in OPEC and affecting the mid- and long-term interests of its other members, like Venezuela," says Victor Poleo, a professor of graduate studies in oil economics at the Central University (UCV), in Caracas. After the war "there will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production, and I wouldn't be surprised if schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC," said Humberto Calderon, a former Venezuelan minister of energy and of foreign relations, in a conversation with IPS.

The United States has been trying for some time to reduce its dependence on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf region, home to the dominant members of OPEC, an 11-country cartel comprising Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. That was the aim of the controversial energy plan that George W. Bush brought with him to the White House, in which he has sought to expand oil exploration and exploitation within the US, even in the protected natural areas of Alaska.

Yeah, but the oil now belongs to US companies, 'cause they're exploring it. Don't know for how, though.

Finding something like advanced BC weapons is pretty much impossible if Iraqis hid them well. You can store for example biological weapon material in such small containers (test tube size), that it's very easy to hide and impossible to find. One thing everybody know. Iraq had these weapons at some point. The question is did it get rid of them like it was suppose to or not..

Factories producing fertilizers can be changed to produce some chemical weapons extremely quickly and easily, and vice versa hide that anything ever happened.

I don't know how long it will take before they have "profit". That's not the point. The point is that they now control the second largest oil reserve in the world and profits are guaranteed, once stability is achived in Iraq.

HUH?!? Iraqi oil belongs to US companies??! I don't think so...

OPEC may be major war casualty

09-04-03 US and British oil companies will probably get the lion's share of the petroleum business in Iraq once the war there is over, seriously undermining the interests of OPEC, say oil industry experts. They also warn that an end to the war will not immediately translate into abundant supplies of inexpensive crude because of the prospect of long-term instability in the war-ravaged country.
"There is no doubt that the military occupation of such an important oil-exporting country is creating cracks in OPEC and affecting the mid- and long-term interests of its other members, like Venezuela," says Victor Poleo, a professor of graduate studies in oil economics at the Central University (UCV), in Caracas. After the war "there will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production, and I wouldn't be surprised if schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC," said Humberto Calderon, a former Venezuelan minister of energy and of foreign relations, in a conversation with IPS.

The United States has been trying for some time to reduce its dependence on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf region, home to the dominant members of OPEC, an 11-country cartel comprising Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. That was the aim of the controversial energy plan that George W. Bush brought with him to the White House, in which he has sought to expand oil exploration and exploitation within the US, even in the protected natural areas of Alaska.
But control of Iraqi oil wealth could turn into a solution for US oil worries and a key to reducing prices as well as influencing OPEC. However, not all experts believe that after the war it will be easy for petroleum investments in Iraq to flourish.

"It would be a mistake to assume that immediately after the US occupation there would come a prolonged period of political stability in Iraq and surrounding areas," warns another graduate professor at UCV, Mahzar al-Shereidah, an Iraqi-Venezuelan. The "stability factor", Al-Shereidah told, "is fundamental for the materialization of oil industry projects.”
“The big oil companies are very aware of the rich subsoil in Iraq, but an occupying regime creates additional risks to dealing with political, ideological, cultural and religious factors. And the corporations are going to take that into account," he added.

Iraqi territory holds 112 bn barrels of petroleum in proven reserves, the second-largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia's 260 bn. And Iraq's crude is relatively easy to extract from the ground. Each oil well represents major output because production costs are just two $ per 159-litre barrel. Because it is light, sweet crude it is easily refined and has little sulphur or metal residue.
But "the extreme cruelty of this invasion, which has affected entire peoples, awakens deep sensitivities in a nation that is proud of resisting conquerors. We are going to witness the allotment of war booty and the United States will take the lion's share -- but it will not be effortless," Al-Shereidah predicted.

According to former oil minister Calderon, Iraq could double its output of 2.4 mm bpd within a short time. Prior to the war, total production was limited through the "oil for food" programme, overseen by the United Nations in the context of the embargo imposed against Baghdad for invading neighbouring Kuwait in 1990. As Iraq's role as a supplier increases, "the OPEC countries will be elbowing each other out of the way" to win markets, pushing prices down, Calderon predicts.
Fadhil Chalabi, an Iraqi national and former OPEC secretary-general, goes even further. He believes his country could even double its proven reserves through intense oil exploration, becoming a "super-giant producer", like Saudi Arabia, putting as much as 10 mm barrels on the international market each day.

In addition to its oil output potential, Iraq has geographic advantages that reduce the cost of reaching global markets. Its petroleum can be shipped via its port on the Persian Gulf and, to bypass the vulnerability of the Straight of Hormuz between the Gulf and the Arabian Sea, through the pipelines connecting Iraqi oil fields to the Mediterranean and Red seas. Iraq as a super-giant producer of crude oil managed by US and British companies would crown the dearest dream of Republican Party: "to bring OPEC to its knees," forcing the cartel -- through competition from Iraq -- to sell its oil at lower prices, says Chalabi.
In the opinion of the former OPEC official, the depression of prices and the abundance of oil in Iraq will prompt investors to shift their focus away from higher-cost areas, like the North Sea, where Britain and Norway extract oil. They will turn to areas with lower production costs, precisely those of OPEC and the Persian Gulf region, he says.

UCV professor Poleo believes the "US empire will want to hold the keys to all major oil sources, and that will ultimately include the Andean-Amazon oil reserves, which extend from Trinidad-Tobago, through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia." Venezuela is the fifth-leading OPEC member in terms of conventional crude reserves, at 77 bn barrels, but it also holds 270 bn barrels of unconventional, extra-heavy and bituminous crudes.
The 11 OPEC countries have managed their output during the past two decades to maintain stability in the average price of the cartel's "basket" of seven crudes. They consider the optimal price range for consumer and producer nations alike to be $ 22 to $ 28 a barrel.

OPEC "rejects the notion of using petroleum as a political weapon," said a former secretary-general of the organization, Ali Rodriguez, current president of Venezuela's state-run oil firm PdVSA. As such, OPEC has made an effort prior to and during the war in Iraq to ensure a consistent supply of oil to its clients in the industrialized world.
The markets have seen petroleum prices decline from a mean of $ 32 per barrel before the war to fluctuating around $ 26 a barrel two weeks after the invasion of Iraq began. The situation kept in step with the advances of the US-British forces in Iraq, though OPEC suggested that its members might cut back production in order to buoy prices.

Another major factor influencing the oil markets is the potential for fat profits for the companies, also probably American and British, that win contracts for the reconstruction of a country emerging from years of war and economic embargo. The Bush administration -- which Poleo describes as "an oil directorate" because of the links between government officials like the president and vice president themselves and energy and aerospace firms -- has already made clear that it will control the reconstruction contracts, which are estimated to be worth $ 30 bn to $ 100 bn.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has said Iraqi revenues, particularly those from the oil industry, would serve as key resources for rebuilding the country. The first companies to win some of these contracts were International Resources Group, to coordinate humanitarian aid efforts, Stevedoring Services of America, to run the Um Qasar petroleum shipping terminal, and Kellogg Brown & Root, to control oil wells that have been set on fire.
The latter is a subsidiary of Halliburton, a major petroleum industry construction firm, which until 2000 was headed by. Vice President Dick Cheney. For the exploitation of the Iraqi oil fields, "it is certain that US and British firms will have priority, and will try to make up for their absence in Iraq during the 12 years of the embargo, and press Baghdad to back down from partnership contracts with oil companies from China, France and Russia," said Al-Shereidah.

Firms from the three countries signed letters of intent for oil development that would require investments of more than $ 40 bn. The big question now is to what extent those contracts will be respected by the US and Britain in post-war Iraq.
As far as the Iraq National Oil Company, the government enterprise that has managed the petroleum industry since its nationalization in the 1960s until now, "it is very possible that it will remain, though it might be partially privatised to facilitate the distribution of percentages the United States will collect for the costs of the war and those earmarked for expenses and investment in Iraq," said Al-Shereidah.

I really think that the fact that they didn't find anything yet is a strong "anti-war" argument. I don't know of any proofs of Iraq having this kind of weapons in the latest years.

Powerful countries will do what they want and they will take what they want.

Sorry for posting the whole text, but I don't have a lot of time now.

How about indirect proof? Refusing from the UN weapon inspections for years.

There has been never proved a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 and likely there will never be.