'stable..' Surely you jest (?)
(Damn, can't find my ASCII cone-balanced-on-point, with a fly about to land..)
See your point, from the article, of course.
What we can never know is, whether Saddam would have moved the local zeitgeist into chaos..? anywhere as rapidly as ... soon after the First Flyboy's Victory costume show, right?
Those ignoramuses--the scent of raw petroleum paralyzing all the neurons--went into a wasps' nest wearing cut-off shorts drenched in honey.
Expecting a Victory Parade w/speeches and Fat Oil Contracts a few months later.
It's still hard to believe, 11 years out, that Condoleezza + Scary-Nukes-posters made saps of 98% of (even-) D.C. and re the plebs: hook, line and sinker.
(As to Next: gotcher popcorn + hemlock ready for Da Show?)