Was the War Worth It?

Three years into the Iraq war, TIME posed the question to a wide array of experts and thinkers. The answers may surprise you

Was it worth it, of course, is only one of the questions. What were the alternatives? What could have been done differently? Are things getting better or worse? And however we got here, what do we do now?

As the Iraq war's third anniversary approached, the news fed both doubts and hopes. Saddam Hussein took the stand in his trial for the first time, reminding people of what they were missing. Meanwhile, the brand-new Iraqi parliament met in a capital under curfew to pull together some kind of future amid warnings of civil war. U.S. forces launched Operation Swarmer, the biggest...

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