The truly sad thing is that Bush even fucked taking out Saddam. We’ve squandered years and millions of dollars on a shabby show trial that just turned Saddam into a martyr. We could have gotten better results 3 years ago if we were willing to kill Saddam outright. Just dropping a grenade into his spider hole would have been “cleanest” in terms of strategy, but even arranging a quiet assassination (where Saddam died “trying to escape” or “resisting arrest”) would have been palatable.

While the whole Iraq invasion was a strategic disaster, killing Saddam in 2003 could have possibly slowed the insurgency, to the extent that it discouraged the “bitter end” Baathists from fighting or funding other insurgents.