Kristol had no such concerns. He mocked those who did. “If we want to be popular in the Arab world, we should liberate the people of Iraq from Saddam,” he said during a Fox News appearance in April 2002. In November 2002, he predicted that removing Saddam would have a positive “chain reaction” effect across the Middle East. The following February, he declared that “if we free the people of Iraq, we will be respected in the Arab world . . . and I think we will be respected around the world.”
