Again I must thank my anonymous commenter. I agree with your basic point that a "War on Terror" in itself does not make sense. As you say terror is a tactic. We are actually at war with what others have dubbed Islamofacists. I like this term because I feel it is more accurate than al Qaeda, since al Qaeda looks to more a loose affiliation of like-minded Islamic extremists.
But I would like to address a point that you have made a couple of times now, that is that the Americans (or more correctly, the coalition of the willing) have killed 10,000 innocent people in Iraq since the war in Iraq began. If this is true then that is, of course, terrible. However I have read other reports that Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime consistently killed 100,000 innocent Iraqi's every year. So if it comes down to math only, then it still comes out in the side of the coalition. But I think you would agree with me, it does not come to the mathematics of who killed/saved more innocent people.
You also mention that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. As far as anyone can tell, including the Bush administration, this is correct. President Bush II has never made the case that the invasion (or liberation if you like) of Iraq was due to 9/11 directly. What 9/11 did in relation to Iraq is change the mindset. Hussein was a brutal dictator, who was in violation of the treaty that ended the first Gulf War, that regularly shot at US aircraft, that used poison gas against Kurdish Iraqis, that was pursuing other WMDs including purchasing weaponizable uranium from Niger. Something which is now proven, regardless of what Ambassador Wilson says. Hussein also sponsored/rewarded Islamic terrorists, as well as providing safe haven for al Qaeda members. All in all a pretty bad dude. The United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, Australia, Phillipenes, etc. thought that in a post 9/11 world that Hussein needed to be dealt with. Of course France, Germany, Canada, the UN... disagreed. This is a fair debate. It was a tough call. You can make a case either way, and for every "Bush did it to get revenge for his father" that is brought up, I can bring up "UN/France/Russia being bought off by the UN Oil-for-food scandal". My point is that Coalition of the Willing did what they did because they thought it was the right thing do. It would make the world safer by removing a potential threat, bring democracy to Arab Middle-East and take the fight to al Qaeda (Afghanistan is included in this point). I say all this not to convince you of the logic behind the War in Iraq, but to hope to show that there was, at least, some logic there.
