When you say, well, "he was really bad anyways", the logic is no different to the emotional play that a prosecution makes to sway the jury by pointing to the horror and nature of a crime and then associating the fact that the defense did something else that was bad in their life, even if they have no connection.
The logic is different. Because Hussein was being invaded for all of those reasons. He wasn't on a man on trial with the jury having to consider whether he was guilty solely over one thing.
How was the significance of Iraq's evil dictatorship more prevalent than say, taking out North Korea's, instead? Why no same heartfelt concern for the Ethiopian, Rwanda, or Somalian genocides that killed way more people than Iraq? It doesn't add up that American interests were to protect a people needing democracy to those who idealistically and intrinsically hate Americans regardless of what aid they could use to 'free' them. The North Korean people would actually be more welcome to the Americans upon saving.
To begin with, conservative politics believe in what they claim is "smaller government". But to their reasoning, it should be passed to preferential corporate interests for the nations sake: that is, they spend money on corporations to do what is lost in government. [This, by the way, is what National Socialism did in Germany.] One of the things that Bush did was to encourage war in order to create economy for the military machine and particular favored corporate interests (like Halliburton, for instance) The loss or cost of the debts of the war are passed on to the common people through lives, taxation, and loss of rights to privacy and securities at home. But these are not incurred by people like Bush. If they could, they would bankrupt the government as is to make it impossible to exist (smallest government). All those he wanted to gain personally, are and have been secured.
You starting to sound like a left-wing caricature about what the right supposedly stands for. Conservative politics is not about mixing big business with government (though some corrupt Republicans seek to do this, but they are not being conservative). And no, that is not what Nazi Germany did. Nazi Germany's businesses didn't have a say in what they had to do. They were commanded by the government. Also, you need to provide some proof regarding your claim that Bush pushed for war to "create economy for the military machine" and "favored corporate interests."
You presume that I'm making this up out of thin air, or what? The conservative political agenda of the Republican Party is to conserve the traditional institutions and people of those who they believe to be more original to the United States Nationality and pride. This, to them, is the Protestant Christians, the capital interests of the economic status quo and their social privileges. This is no different than Hitler's preservation of the past Aryan nationality to Germany.
For gains, see:
Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers]
Bush was not talking about nuclear bombing other countries. He was saying that the United States would go after any nation that harbored terrorists. It was perhaps an oversimplified form of wording, but he wasn't saying either you are with the United States regarding whatever it wants to do or you are with the terrorists, he was saying either you are with the United States and seek to undermine terrorism or you are aiding the terrorists, and thus against the U.S.
No one interpreted Bush as threatening nuclear war on them. It meant economic sanctions. Don't dismiss his intent by your assumptions. His words were clear.
America, contrary to your propaganda, was not the determiner of the break of the U.S.S.R.. There are a lot of factors that went into it. Italy, I'm sure is amplifying the fact that it was the new Pope from Poland who initiated the fall. We have also learned through recent times that the Soviet Union's people had more just reasons to fear the Americans throughout the cold war due to their paranoia.
The only reasons the Soviet peoples had to fear the United States was from the aggression of the Soviet government itself towards the free world. The United States was not the sole cause of the Soviet Union's collapse, I agree. But the United States was the main power that stood as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and global communism throughout the Cold War. And although the U.S. wasn't solely responsible for the Soviet Union's breakup, it did play a major role nonetheless.
Communism was illogically feared in the first place. The mere paranoia from the Americans is mostly responsible for the treatment of the U.S.S.R. towards their people by forcing unnecessary resources to fund their own nuclear armament and effort to secure themselves. I wander if they were just left alone from the beginning without external pressures and economic sanctions whether they would have either succeeded to a better society or learned earlier on their own to abandon it.?