rrpjr:
I see no real counter arguments in your statements, and there is one truly egregious mis-statment.
9/11 didn't 'come out of a clear blue sky...' It followed a 1998 fatwah specifically categorizing injustices that OBL observed and set his followers to redress.
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/fatwah.htm
There is a long chain of abuses heaped upon the middle east for which the Western world is paying - the U.S., disproportionately. Our interference; hell, even our help. It all went wrong. Saddam was a useful tool of the CIA. The Shah of Iran was a useful tool of Western interests. We armed, then abandoned the Mujahadeen -- many of whom became OBL's followers.
The "oil for food" program was specifically mentioned by OBL as a motivating factor in his war against the U.S. By his accounts (and others) pehaps 100,000 died by starvation in Iraq every year the program was in place.
It's incredibly naive to buy the administration's repeated statements that OBL is 'a madman' and think 9/11 was unprovoked.
It was provoked, as far as OBL and his followers are concerned. They believe they are fully justified in any action that gets our fingers out of the middle east. They express it in terms of 'believers and infidels' so that the uneducated can understand. But their war is both cultural and economic.
It does us no good to ignore the motives of our enemies. They are prepared to die to punish us, and we have to not only neutralize OBL, but hand off Iraq and get out so they will focus their anger on their brethren. Yes, it sounds cold, but if the middle east is allowed to be truly democratic, fundamentalist governments will be elected and Afghanistan, Iraq and others will be headed right back toward Taliban-like rule. Only Iran, with a decades of progress toward Western-style living, shows proomise as a potentially positive force -- if democracy ever fully blossoms there.
In this context, Saddam was a real lynchpin in the middle east, and taking him out of power will quite possibly turn out to be the absolute worst thing the U.S. could have done to protect its interests there.
(edit for typos)