Now let's play suppose.

Bush ignores the nearly unanimous intelligence community. He takes no action against Saddam. The dictator remains in power. The sanctions end. He restarts his WMD program. We experience another 9/11 or worse on American soil. Our intel traces the attack back to Saddam. Congress demands investigations for Bush's "failure to heed the clear consensus of the intelligence community and to take appropriate action." Democrats and many Republicans push for impeachment, based on negligence and malfeasance.

Angry members of Congress quote the February 1998 words of the secretary of State under Clinton, Madeleine Albright: "Iraq is a long way from (here), but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

What if we had known before we got there that he possessed no stockpiles of WMD? Would we have invaded? A better question is as follows: Given what the President reasonably thought and the consequences of doing nothing, did he do the right thing?

Osama bin Laden called Iraq the "central front in the war" against the infidels. Gen. Franks said: "The global war on terrorism will be a long fight. But make no mistake about it. We are going to fight the terrorists. The question is: Do we fight them over there, or do we fight them here?"

Support for homicide bombing has fallen dramatically from 2002 to 2007 in seven of eight Muslim countries surveyed -- as much as 74 to 34 percent in Lebanon, and 33 to 9 percent in Pakistan. And support for the extreme "Islamist" parties in Muslim countries, with some exceptions, has also declined. Iraq -- alone among Muslim Middle Eastern countries -- now has a fledgling democracy.

One more thing. We haven't been attacked on American soil since 9/11.