It's probably worth pointing out that while the rest of the world was suspicious of Saddam, they wanted continued scrutiny, not preemptive military action. The Iraq problem is ours alone. The character issue for Bush is that he consistently fails to seriously accept responsibility for the magnitude of the problem. In the eyes of the Arab world, we told Saddam to disarm or we would destroy him. As events unfolded, it became clear to most of the world and certainly the Arab world that Saddam had disarmed and we destroyed him anyway. Now, our word is no longer trustworthy. The infrastructure is the least of the things that has to be rebuilt in Iraq. Our reputation is shattered by the administrations moving target rationale, its efforts to minimize the suffering of Iraqi people as "worth it" for Bush's political agenda and by turning their country into a battleground because it's better to fight our enemies on their soil than our own. America will not be able to get past this because the Arabs will not. We need to reassure them that starting an unjustified war because we are afraid is a thing of the past. The only person who can do that is the Commander-In-Chief. For now, that's W.
