I think a major point that needs to be remembered about the U.S. Invasion of Iraq how the reasons for the invasion didn't make any more sense in the run-up to the war in 2002-2003 than they do today. While the going to war was being debated, it was pretty obvious that all of the shifting justifications for invading did not make sense (that's why they kept shifting). And yet, the people who raised objections to the invasion (and there really were a lot!) were treated by both the establishment media was the lunatic fringe. The people with expertise on Iraq, were almost universally against the war. Even senior U.S. Diplomats with years of experience in the region resigned in opposition to the war. There was a lot of dissent, and a whole lot of effort by both people in power and the media establishment to hide and silence the scope of that dissent from the public at large.
Don't buy the 20 years after the fact spin that the Iraq War only appeared senseless in retrospect. The ridiculousness of the idea was right there in the open from the start. Lots of people tried hard to tell the public how ridiculous it was, and they were mocked and marginalized for it. Meanwhile, the people who mocked and marginalized them mostly kept their influence to this day, without ever paying a real price for the death and destruction they made happen. That's a big legacy of the Iraq War.
