I will provide a longer (ha!) response to your direct question a little later but there's something that I want to point out before I do that. Having read your list of reasons, and I know these are all good faith reasons for wanting to remain there on your part, there is something plainly obvious to me. I will also throw out that I agree with the "you broke it, you bought it" statements from Ware on CNN. I said earlier that the one reason for staying in Iraq I could not argue with was if the Iraqis asked us to stay and help them. We turned their country upside down and sadly we bought the responsibility to help them fix it when we did. There really is no getting around that as a simple truth. Both parties use the war for political profit...a sick and disgraceful thing no matter who is doing it...and the situation we find ourselves in now was caused purely due to profiteering on the part of Bushco. The list of reasons to stay in Iraq from Dale helps highlight this fact:

1. To prevent a fullscale genocide.

Saddam prevented this from occurring when he was in power. Granted he used some brutal means of doing so but held all sides at bay. Sunnis, Shiites, the Kurdish Peshmerga...the place has always been a powder keg. This is the reason Bush 1 let Saddam stay in the first Gulf War.

2. To prevent the Iranians from moving into Iraq.

This was one of our big reasons for getting buddy buddy with Saddam in the first place. We knew he was a thug but he would stand up against Iran. An enemy of our enemy is our friend kind of deal. We knew with Saddam in power there Iraq would never align itself with Iran.

3. To fight al Qaeda, who have sinced moved into Iraq to kill us infidels (and innocent civilians).

Another reason we liked Saddam, he was more of a secular type guy, he would not partner up with religious extremists and the religious extremists didn't much care for him either...Saddam liked the Western World and their ways...guys like Osama really took issue with that. Saddam was kookoo for cocoa puffs!

4. To help stabilize their govenment.

Saddam kept things stabilized, used some nasty methods at times to do it, but our government did not take issue with that. Many people felt you had to rule with an iron fist in these Muslim countries so they thought a thug like Saddam was the perfect leader there.

5. To continue training the Iraqi military and police.

Saddam kept his military trained...remember the Republican Guard? We even spent some time trying to buy them and recruit them back to go to work for the new government there. One of our big mistakes when we went there according to military experts and strategists was not keeping the Republican Guard intact for the new government. Saddam had police too...again some nasty methods were used but the new police in Iraq are said to be using the same methods. I'd be willing to bet some of the new police are the same guys that worked for Saddam's police.

6. To keep the oil flowing out of the country which contributes to the global economy.

Saddam could have done this as well. We had him under heavy sanctions remember, which served to hurt the people of Iraq more than Saddam.

7. To keep from repeating the mistakes made in Vietnam.

Had we left Saddam in power items 1 through 6 were simple and item 7 would not even need to be discussed. So, even though we all agree that Saddam was a scumbag, he was our scumbag and maintained all of the things about Iraq, Dale is giving us as reasons to stay there.

I'm not saying this as a "gotcha" type thing either...just as the "you broke it, you bought it" thing is a simple truth...so is what I am saying above.

These reasons for staying highlight why we should not have attacked Iraq in the first place.

Just some food for thought.

(Note: Please don't beat me up for being a "Saddam supporter", I'm not. The fact is a sad truth is a sad truth and our world is full of them. I'm not happy to say that.)