QOTD

From Andrew Roberts' A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, at 603-04 (2007):

If America's part in the Second World War started in 1941 with the counter-intuitive but nonetheless hard-headed analysis that it was necessary to fight Germany first, then her War against Terror began similarly. Although Saddam Hussein had not been implicated in the attacks of 9/11, Iraq was the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism and an openly and oft-declared foe of the English-speaking peoples, who had led the coalition that had foiled his attempt to dominate the Middle East in 1990-1. . . Just as the Roosevelt Administration and Churchill Government had agreed to destroy Hitler first, even though Japan was the immediate enemy that had struck America, so the Bush Administration and Blair Government correctly identified the importance of removing the core problem in the Middle East -- Saddam Hussein -- even though the immediate enemy that had struck the United States had been Al-Queda.