It’s lost now to the rapacious pixelated maw of Canadian servers, but I remember back in 2005 writing something for the news organization I then worked for about a Robert Kagan-penned historical counterfactual about how the Middle East would be a nightmare if Saddam Hussein remained in power. Kagan’s column was, ah, unconvincing, predicated as it was on the unsupportable proposition that Saddam would have inexorably acquired such power WMD as would allow him to reshape the Middle Eastern balance of power. But the release of Saddam’s FBI interviews underscores the depths of the divide between the way Saddam saw the crisis of 2002-3 and the way we did. Here’s how he viewed his options in the future, according to the Times:

Mr. Hussein told the F.B.I. that if United Nations sanctions against his country had been lifted, Iraq would have sought a security agreement with the United States to protect it from Iran.

I don’t raise this to castigate Kagan. Instead, consider the prospect of Saddam Hussein, still in power after the Legendary Bush Reversal Of Spring 2003 allows for a thoroughgoing U.N. inspections regime to certify his absence of WMD programs, making a grand bargain to the U.S. at some point in the future: continuing United Nations monitoring in exchange for American security guarantees against Iran. (I recognize that I’m building into the counterfactual a condition — continuing WMD monitoring — that isn’t contained in the Times piece.) What American administration would have taken the politically disastrous step of extending a security guarantee to Saddam Hussein?

In the twilight of the Iraq war, it’s not difficult to consider a guarantee-for-continued-disarmament-verification a rational policy move carrying exponentially lower costs in blood, treasure and opportunity than the invasion-and-occupation course that we pursued in the real world. But the political constraints from pursuing that option would have surely been insurmountable, no? Who would have been the politician to stand up and say, Given the available options, if we hold our noses, we can remove a plausible demand-side rationale for any Iraqi WMD program and advance our arms-control interests in the Middle East while preserving a stable and U.S.-backed balance of power in the region that benefits us? knowing s/he would be noisily shouted down and vilified in an onslaught of both demagoguery and, frankly, sincere and rational skepticism over the willingness of Saddam Hussein to keep his promises?

Nothing above justifies an unjustifiable invasion and occupation. But it’s always worth reflecting on the gulf between a rational policy and political reality when attempting to draw lessons in avoiding future catastrophies.