An unnecessary war.

One by one, the rationales put forward by the Bush administration and its allies for the Iraq War have collapsed. Nasty as it was, Saddam's regime never posed a threat to the United States--as the Bush administration admitted in January 2001. No operational contacts existed between Baghdad and al-Qaeda. There is no evidence that by March 2003, when the invasion began, Saddam possessed any weapons of mass destruction, let alone the huge arsenal attributed to him.

Even prior to the invasion, President Bush and his supporters had sought to reframe the issue by describing the military campaign as a war of liberation: Saddam had to be removed in order to install a "democratic" government. Radio personality Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Bush's most energetic and least persuasive shills, digested that argument into an incessantly repeated sound bite: "The world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power."

Given that Saddam is being replaced by a revolutionary Shi'ite regime aligned with Iran, Hannity's assertion is not obviously true. Even if it were, however, it still wouldn't justify the war, which has devoured the lives of thousands of American and allied troops, and tens of thousands of Iraqis--since Saddam was willing to leave in order to prevent the invasion.

"Deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein accepted an 11th hour offer to flee into exile weeks ahead of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion but Arab League officials scuttled the proposal," reported the AP on October 29. The offer had been extended through the efforts of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late president of the United Arab Emirates, during a February 2003 emergency Arab summit in Egypt. "Sheik Zayed's initiative would have given Saddam and his family exile and guarantees against prosecution in return for letting Arab League and UN experts run Iraq until elections could be held in six months," continued the report.

The 2003 proposal was revealed by Sheik Zayed's son during an interview aired on the Al-Arabiya television network, and was confirmed by a "top UAE government official." The anonymous official said that Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa did not act on the proposal because it had not been presented according to League protocol.

It's impossible to believe that Washington was unaware of Saddam's willingness to go into exile and permit elections to take place. And while nothing good can come from turning the political system of any country over to "UN experts," that's essentially what the Bush administration did following its invasion of Iraq. This means that the invasion and war were entirely unnecessary--and that Americans, allies, and Iraqis have died for nothing.