A better answer to questions about Iraq?

David French:

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While I’m not running for president, let me briefly answer the question — in a manner that’s a bit different from Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, and John Kasich, who’ve all said that we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. We know Saddam’s regime supported terror attacks that were destabilizing the Middle East and aimed at Americans, violated its cease-fire agreements with the U.S., fired daily on American pilots enforcing lawful no-fly zones, defied U.N. resolutions regarding its WMD program, and maintained thousands of chemical munitions in stockpiles around the country. We also know that it’s possible to not only overthrow a despotic regime but to defeat a counterinsurgency — with the right tactics. And Syria teaches us that when Ba’athist regimes collide with the Arab Spring that jihad can and will spiral out of control, creating terrorist armies larger and more powerful than any we fought in Iraq.
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There were many reasons to overthrow Saddam Hussein.  It would have been better to frame the WMD issue as one of Saddam's failure to account for it as required by his agreement to end the first Gulf War and by the UN.  Then not finding all the stockpiles would only have meant that the US was also unable to account for what were previously known quantities of WMD.  There should have also been a better security plan put in place and kept in place.  If that had been done there would be on ISIL and Iran would be in a much weaker posture.