The premise that Mr. Young based his entire guest column on - that the Bush administration "targeted Iraq because it was the candidate for immediate democratization" - is completely wrong. The Bush administration invaded Iraq on false claims of WMDs , and once proved wrong they turned to democratizing Iraq as their rationale for war.
The claim that the Bush administration entered Iraq knowing that WMDs didn't exist isn't "ludicrous" as Mr. Young claims. The administration was aware that some, if not all, of their claims were false before the invasion. The CIA told the administration that the claim that Iraq bought uranium from Niger was untrue in the fall of 2002, yet it found its way into the 2003 State of the Union address.
In addition, in February 2001 Colin Powell said Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction," after receiving a CIA report. All of this helps to explain why the Bush administration refused to let the U.N. inspectors do their job and rushed us to war. They were well aware that their claims were dubious at best, and invaded before they could be disproved.
