You don't have to agree with the conclusions of an article such as Ibgnatieff's to value it as an article; in the same way you wouldn't have to disagree with the concusions of other articles to recognise them as shoddy pieces of work. I get the impression a lot of people commenting on these issues find it hard to get their heads round that.

"It depends on the cost" - and that has to take in an awful lot of other considerations as well as the intersts of the Iraqi people.

Moreover "the good of the Iraqi people" isn't as straightforward as all that. I think it is very likely indeed that many well meaning people, at the time of the coup which brought the Baath Party to power, believed that it would be for the good of the Iraqi people, and for a time it probably was. The consequences of a course of actioncan take a long time to work themselves out.