Not since Vietnam have the two sides for and against the invasion of Iraq been so thoroughly split. It is clear that the American public was told untruths- about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction. But, one "pro-critic" states: "So was Saddam a threat? The only reason he didn't have WMD anymore was because of an ongoing, expensive, and onerous international system of sanctions that Iraq's open and secret (France, Germany, Russia) allies were doing their best to subvert and undermine. The sanctions and military efforts and expense required to enforce them could not have been sustained forever" (Sammon 2004 1).
The moderate senator, John McCain, also supports the invasion and its aftermath: "Last August, during my first trip to Iraq, I was struckà by a burning ambition among Iraqis to build their country anew. Nothing I saw then and nothing I have learned since has changed my conviction that the war was just. We were right to liberate Iraq and end Saddam's threat to the world" (McCain 2004 1) .
The opposite viewpoint, while it supports the sacrifices of the troops, sees the U.S. as over-doing its role as "the world's policeman." This point of view clearly asks whether the U.S. should have an obligation, moral or otherwise, to dictate the forms of government that other nations have and may have had for centuries. In other words, is the U.S. obligated to export democracy to everyone? The Iraqis, despite the free elections and the work on its new Constitution have never had a democratic form of government.
There is another interesting viewpoint about the Iraqi invasion: the billions spent on this war could have been used for far more humanitarian resources, especially in Africa: "Were the United States not spending $5 billion to $8 billion a month on Iraq, it would have troops and resources left over to help the international community stop the slaughter, rape and deportations overwhelming men, w
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