Talking of fudging the issue and ducking things:

Question 1:
"All this restoration and improvement was something that seemed to have slipped Saddam's priority list in the eleven post Desert Storm years he had gathering in the oil revenue of Iraq through the smuggling operations that he was running. That netted him a tidy sum that he spent on what Carrots?"

No answer from the font of all wisdom and rational thinking - Question ducked.

Question 2:
"Well Carrots, show me somewhere that has an effective administration."

No answer to this one either - Question ducked.

Couldn't care less how many people you "know" who have been in Iraq, I take it that your point of view would dictate that their opinions are much more relevant than people that I know who have served in both Iraq and in Afghanistan and are currently there now.

Fact still remains old fruit, that during Saddam's time around 3,000,000 people fled the regime and the country was held together by unbridled terror. No matter how bad things might appear to be viewed through the eyes of the western media which is predominantly anti-American and always has been, for the average Iraqi there now exists the prospect that things are going to get better, that is something that they have never known before. With Saddam left in place things were only ever going to get a damn sight worse, particularly when you considered the likely line of succession.

Had nothing been done about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, if the world had followed the UN's course of abandonment of responsibility, sanctions would have disappeared long ago, Iran's nuclear programme would have triggered a second Iran/Iraq war and the region would be in flames. Please don't chatter on about the UN's weapons inspectors being "allowed" to do their jobs, without first giving credit to the man who got them invited back into Iraq - George W Bush. Hell would have frozen over before they would have been allowed back in if that invitation had been left up to the Government of Iraq.