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[inademv]

70. His support for the war was for the removal of Saddam, not the occupation

And pretty much any area where one can point to something that went wrong following the initial invasion, Hitchens was critical of what was wrong.

I agree with his position that it was a fight worth having for two reasons:
1) Saddam's regime of torture and murder was a blight to the human race, not just those directly subject to it (and I feel this way about the things happening in Africa as well).
2) Saddam would not have been in the position he was in, with the weapons he had, if the United States had not provided both.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a reason to leave Hussein in power (this point also applies to many countries in the Middle East but especially Syria and Libya).

The issue here, I think, is where do we draw the line between the removal of Saddam's regime and when we became occupiers. I'm not solid on the dates but I think that point came following the capture of Baghdad and the complete failures in maintaining the infrastructure there (that fiasco with the generators they brought in) and the failure in enabling the Iraqis to fill the void created by Saddam's removal by themselves.