Gun barrel democracy would indicate we are forcing democracy and that the populace does not want it. That is something that is being show to be untrue through out the middle east in the last few weeks. To say war is only to kill people is a farce. The short term objective of war is to neutralize those opposing you. Rarely killing people the true objective. Some are about land, some are about freedom to choose, some are about stopping killing, it all depends.

You keep talking about oil and money but ignore the question of stability. The wiki leak documents hint towards one of the main things that the liberals want to deny. If we are to believe them, then we would accept the fact that the Saudis precieved Sadaam as a threat to the area. That would to a degree also indicate that they felt he had the weapons to validate that threat.

So, did we achieve the objectives we set out to achieve. Well, first of all Sadaam is gone. Two, there is a resemblence of democracy in the area, and three, the seeing as how the rest of the arab world seems to be crying for our help in there ongoing revolutions, we did win the hearts of a percentage of the populace, something we did not have before entering the area.