After the infamous WMDs that the United States provided Saddam during the 1980s unexpectedly failed to be found during President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, the president shifted his primary rationale for the war to helping the Iraqi people oust Saddam Hussein from office and bringing them “democracy.”

Bush’s welfare-state rationale was: The Iraqi people are too dumb, incompetent, and weak to oust Saddam and implement democracy on their own, even after 12 years of brutal U.S. and UN sanctions, which contributed to the deaths of multitudes of Iraqi children through infection and disease, encouraging them to do so.

Therefore, Bush’s reasoning went, this was a job for the U.S. federal daddy-god, which helps people with endeavors that they are unable to accomplish on their own.

As everyone knows, congressional Democrats firmly believe in the federal government’s role as the American people’s welfare daddy-god. He provides us with free retirement (Social Security), free health care (Medicare and Medicaid), free education (grants for public-government schooling), disability compensation, and countless other forms of compassionate federal welfare.

Yes, it’s true that sometimes our daddy-god is dysfunctional (Hurricane Katrina and FEMA) or abusive (libraries and the PATRIOT Act). But the fact is that our daddy-god’s love is perpetual, as best reflected by the free compassionate and caring welfare that he provides his adult-children. Let’s also not forget the free disaster money (hurricane debit cards) that our federal daddy-god provides his adult-children here in the United States as well as to people in other parts of the world (tsunami victims in Malaysia and earthquake victims in Pakistan).

So why should it surprise anyone that the Democrat members of Congress would buy into Bush’s welfare-state rationale for invading Iraq? In the minds of the Democrats, Bush’s invasion reflects our federal daddy-god’s compassionate and caring love for the Iraqi people.

Never mind that our federal daddy-god killed countless innocent Iraqis with his brutal 12 years of sanctions, his illegal no-fly zones, and his deadly and destructive invasion and occupation of the country. And never mind that our federal daddy-god tortured, sexually abused, raped, and murdered hundreds of Iraqi detainees in the process of bringing them compassionate welfare. While the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis are not able to experience the benefits of our daddy-god’s democracy welfare (because they’re dead), and while the maimed are not able to fully enjoy them (because they now lack arms, legs, sight, or health), congressional Democrats would argue these are simply unfortunate collateral consequences of the “tough love” that comes with help provided by our federal daddy-god.

Finally, like all other federal welfare-state programs, the results in Iraq are perverse and perverted — the installation of an extremist Islamic regime that, like Saddam’s regime, becomes increasingly brutal as the days pass and that, like Saddam’s regime, spends much of its time torturing and killing insurgents. But as congressional Democrats say with respect to all their welfare-state programs, “Please judge us by our good intentions, not the actual results of our policies.”

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.