Here is a discussion of Iraq's involvement in Terrorism by Daniel Benjamin who was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council Staff 1998-1999.

"Let's start by stipulating the incontrovertible: Iraq is a state sponsor of terrorism. You mention the State Department's 2000 terrorism report; in fact, Iraq has been pretty much a regular on the annual list since it was first created almost 25 years ago. (The Reagan administration took Iraq off the list in 1982 because Washington saw Saddam Hussein as a valuable ally in containing and undermining the Khomeini regime in Iran. Iraq was put back on the list in 1990 after invading Kuwait.) And you're right to mention the attempt to assassinate the first President Bush in 1993 and the plotting to attack the office in Prague that produces Radio Free Iraq programming.

You could have added the many killings of Iraqi dissidents abroad; support for the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq, which seeks to topple the Tehran government; the subsidies for Palestinian suicide bombers; the safe haven and support given for many years to radical Palestinian groups, including the one led by Abu Nidal, who died in Baghdad last summer after reportedly committing suicide by shooting himself four times. (Talented fellow.) No question, Saddam Hussein uses terror as a tool of policy. Iraq is a distant third behind Iran and Syria on the terror list because Saddam mostly relies on his broken-down intelligence service—who my former boss Richard Clarke recently referred to as the Marx Brothers of international terror—to do the work and because he has not tried anything ambitious since the botched attempt on Bush. But Saddam is still in the business."

If in fact this war is justified as a part of the war on terrorism why pick the nation which is a distant third in the terrorist arena . . . and has not been involved in anything ambitious since 1993.

We can positively tie Pakistan to support for Al-Queda pre 9/11 why not invade Pakistan? The reason is that this is not a war about terrorism.