Nor did Gore take a soft view of Iraq. From his official platform:

In Iraq, we are committed to working with our international partners to keep Saddam Hussein boxed in, and we will work to see him out of power. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have stood up to Saddam Hussein time and time again. As President, Al Gore will not hesitate to use America's military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary.​

i recall a clip from a debate or interview in 2000 where Gore accused W of being soft on Iraq just like his father. I wish i could find it.
From what I remember of the 2000 debates, Bush and Gore didn't disagree on Iraq, but Bush talked about Iraq more than Gore did. I also remember that Bush said he wanted to roll back oil drilling regulations "so that we don't have to buy oil from Saddam Hussein", while Gore said protecting the environment was more important.
 
Looking back, that entire period was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Not only are 3,000 people murdered in cold blood, but instead of bringing people together and giving them hope (as FDR did after Pearl Harbor) the Bush team exploits the national state of fear to push their sinister agenda and plunge the world further into darkness. Civil liberties are stripped away, misinformation (what would be called "fake news" today) is deliberately sold as fact, and the President unleashes a disastrous war that destroys a country and creates a monstrous terrorist organization. And to top it all off, the legacy of a respected and accomplished American family is ruined by an incompetent heir whose younger brother was always meant to inherit the family's political power in the first place. It's just sad really. Not like in WWII where despite all the carnage the world came through and rebuilt itself as a better place, after 9/11 the world didn't get better in the end and people are still suffering from the fallout.
Bush was handed the world's good will towards him and towards the United States, and he pissed it away to resolve a family dispute. If I cared how people felt about America, I would certainly be mad at Bush for this.

Also interesting is how Cheney and Fox News pushed the idea that only Republicans and red states are "real Americans" and then everyone wonders where Trump came from.
 
Yeah, considering his popularity levels at both the beginning and end of his terms OTL, this seems the most likely result.

His popularity at the beginning of his Presidency was in the high 50s, which isn't really that bad. His popularity at the end was driven by the economic crisis and the situation in Iraq, among other issues.
 
Dubya has no reason to invade Iraq without 9/11, and he wouldn't have wanted to. He campaigned as and got elected as a non-interventionist who said in the debates that he opposed "nation-building" while Gore supported it. Iraq happened because Dubya pivoted from dovishness to being a super hawk.

And anyone who thinks that Iraq happened for financial reasons is watching too much Michael Moore. The people in the Bush administration sincerely believed that Saddam was attempting to obtain nuclear WMDs (he wasn't). It was a result of bad intelligence and Saddam bluffing the world by acting like he had them.

The only scenario where George W. Bush invades Iraq is if 9/11 happens. No 9/11, no Iraq.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/...retrospective-analysis-of-the-reconstruction/
 
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