Sure it quickly turned into freeance and peeance and liberation and helping poor oppressed Iraqis and painting schools and blah blah blah, but for a year before that it had nothing to do with that. It was that we needed to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. Many Iraqis are bad guys - hey a deck of cards of Iraqi bad guys! - and we need to get rid of them. The Iraq military were bad guys for defending their country. The Iraqi people themselves were at best complicit in all of this badness because they let him stay in power.
There were the Kurds. The glorious sweet and nice pets of Christopher Hitchens, who for some were the purpose of the war (so many purposes). We were going to liberate the Kurds. But the Iraqis, they were basically the enemy. Of course Iraqi-Americans should be looked at suspiciously. They were quite likely the enemy.
