On March 19, 2003, President George Bush announced that he was commencing an invasion of Iraq. A few days before the war, on March 16, 2003, I set out a number of reasons that I thought that he should refrain from attack. I thought today might be a good time to look back and review how things have played out. I'll put reasons for not going to war in italics and then my thoughts now after each reason.

1. The lack of a threat. Four months of inspections have revealed a few missiles that can reach about two hundred miles. No substantial evidence of a nuclear weapons program since 1991. No stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. Most telling, Iraq's neighbors, the people to whom the alleged threat is greatest, are unwilling to support us.

I think that it is pretty clear that this is true. The administration had no substantial evidence of biological, chemical, or nuclear stockpiles or research before the war, and they haven't been able to discover any in the year that has followed. We've captured Saddam Hussein and most of his cabinet plus top government scientists, and yet we have nothing to show for it.

2. The negative impact on our relationships with other countries who will view our actions as imperialistic. Many nations view our actions as an extension of the colonialist activities of European nations for the past few centuries. Many of them see this as an attempt to impose Western cultural values on the Middle East, and see Iraq as just a starting point,

Spain recently elected a new government in large part because the previous ruler's support of military action in Iraq suddenly became the hot issue. In the buildup to the war, Germany's government was replaced for much the same reasons. It seems fairly clear that our actions in Iraq have heightened anti-American feelings abroad.

3. The horrendous international precedent we are creating here, the impact of which may be used as an excuse for other nations to use military pre-emptive strikes. Maybe China should use one on Taiwan.

We haven't seen any evidence of that. Pakistan and India seemed have to have cooled their rhetoric somewhat, although the link between that and our actions in Iraq would have to be a stretched one.

4. The sudden race for the bomb by every other two bit dictator that sees our disparate treatment of North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is at least ten years away from getting nuclear weapons. Iran, the other member of the axis of evil, is on verge of getting nuclear weapons but for some reason we aren't doing a thing to them.

Although North Korea's actions in the build up leading to the war might have been in at least in part a response to what was happening in Iraq, there isn't any evidence that other countries have revved up research. In fact, Libya and Iran have made some concessions. On the other hand, those nations that are engaging in chemical, biological or nuclear development aren't going to be doing this research in the open.

5. Invading Iraq will do nothing to limit the abilities of Al-Qaeda, and will likely increase their recruiting power. See reference to the poll above. The U.S. has been unable to successfully link Iraq with Al-Qaeda. The nations most closely associated with Al-Qaeda are Saudi Arabia, The Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. The one possible Al-Qaeda base in Iraq was located in the Kurdish autonomous zone.

As with the weapons issue, the administration has failed to establish any link between Al-Qaeda and the former government of Iraq. The Bush adminstration was more careful in this regard. Although they insinuated and did nothing to quell speculation, they never came out and openly declared that they had evidence of a link.

Besides the recent attack in Spain whose origin is uncertain, there haven't been any further Al-Qaeda linked attacks. On the other hand, when we began the attack it had been almost over a year and a half since the attack on the World Trade Center without any further incidents. Osama bin Laden is apparently somewhere in Pakistan and is occasionally making video tapes which he sends out to the rest of the world. I don't think there is any evidence that attacking Iraq has made the world safer from Al-Qaeda.

So, one year later do I still think I was right to oppose the war? Yes. In the end I don't think it was in the U.S.'s long term interest. I think that if that same effort and energy had been devoted to routing bin Laden out of Pakistan the world would have been a much safer place. I think if money that went towards the war in Iraq had been spent on searching for cures for diseases the world would have been a better place. I acknowledge that not all of my predictions have come true, but there are lots of things we should and could have been devoting our time to rather than dealing with a third world dictator who was clearly no immediate(and arguable little long term) threat to our nation's security. I'm sorry for the American lives that have been lost, and I hope that now we are there we can make those losses worthwhile, but those lives should never have been put at risk in the first place.