I know I am going to regret this but.........

... I don't even know wher to begin.

On Sept 11 some people declared war and carried out a major attack on the US, the nature of which we have never seen before.

The US did not really know what to do but clearly felt that 'something must be done'. Bush did lots of things including Afganistan and Iraq. No doubt he had lots of other reasons for doing these things.

I will try to stick close to Iraq even though it's neither possible or even an honest thing to do. The UN and the US had a long term commitment to get change in Iraq. A number of options were possible including,
1. carry on hoping that the sanctions would eventually cause change,
2. invade when the US did,
3. invade later,

Given what Saddam was doing to lots of people in and around Iraq 1. is not without its problems. Given the history of evil regimes, later can be a very long time (USSR, Korea, China, lots of places in Africa and Easten Europe). So, 3 might be as effective as 2 but with lots of dead and tortured people in the meantime.

Iraq has lots of politically motivated gansters and people who want the US humiliated. They are trying to stop the re-development of Iraq. I guess they would do this after any invasion. Maybe later would be better. All the options are bad but we cannot re-run history and start again. I guess we would need to calculate how many people would die in each option.