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1) eliminating a military threat to Saudi Arabia and Israel
2) placing hundreds of military outposts on Iran's doorstep
3) destabilizing Iran and Syria by empowering militant groups dormant under Saddam to re-arm and try to establish a Caliphate in Syria.
4) awarding trillions in no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney's Halliburton and a slew of arms manufacturers and private military contractors who could operate free of the burdensome rules of the Geneva Conventions. Halliburton received so much business that they moved their HQ to Dubai.
There's a lot more evidence and reason to believe that the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because the Bush Administration realized that, despite their initial inclinations, they couldn't sell a war on Iraq as a response to 9/11 without first making a visible effort that was more tangibly connected to the organization that actually carried out the attacks.
I think Xi Jinping and his CPC wish to inflict a Century of Humiliation on the West, or at least on the members of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Russia and Hungary, beware.
Unfortunately this game only takes one willing participant. We'd better get our heads in the game and begin to play. And we need to prepare for a proper hot war, too, although that's already well understood and those preparations are already well underway.
Yet you provide none.
Forgive me for just filing this in the ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’ folder.