Whoa whoa whoa full stop. Iraq's a tiny little conflict compared to what we'd have to do to successfully invade North Korea. The reason it didn't happen was because the Korean peninsula heating up again would make the Holocaust look like a statistical error within the first week.
Agreed. I've seem estimates of tens of thousands of civilian casualities very quickly.
The entire world, not just some Arab countries is going to oppose the US starting a viciously bloody conflict, China especially for starting it on their doorstep. They won't fight on North Korea's behalf but they'll take any means to make the US get out short of actual conflict. ....
And this is the BEST CASE SENERIO.
....
Gaddafi learned not to fuck with the US back in the 90s and Bush isn't about to turn down a former enemy that's opening up to the West, least of all by invading this nation that's opened up to the West, Bush had a bad sense of how his actions would affect the USA's public relations but it wasn't that bad.
Yeah. Gaddafi's little turnabout is the textbook case of what Bush and company wanted. For anti-americans to realize that screwing around with terrorists and/or WMDs was a bad idea and should be stopped immediately. If BUsh still invades, then there is no carrot for behaviour change in bad regimes.