Invading Iraq: A Move From the Cuban Missle Playbook?

Nevermind oil or Israel. If the United States were in Iraq solely for one or both of those reasons, perhaps gas would cost 50 cents a gallon and Israel wouldn't feel the need to flatten Lebanon at the moment. (I.e., the U.S. would've done a more careful job in Iraq-re-set-up, and by a long chain of events, Hamas would not have won the election last year. Yes, they are connected due to Shiia emboldenization, etc.) As for WMD... well, whatever. (What more can be said?)

What if the United States-in-Iraq situation from 2003-present is a botched attempt to replay the succesful ending of the Cuban Missle Crisis?

In the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Soviet Union put missles in Cuba because the U.S. had missles in Turkey. Tit-for-tat, and so forth. The Soviet Union, after the brinksmanship rigamarole of the crisis (the hotline messages, the blockcade, and so on) agreed to pull their missles from Cuba. The U.S. quietly agreed to pull its missles out of Turkey, but six months down the road, and because the missles were "obsolete", not because of a trade-off. But it was, of course, a trade-off.

Now, Osama bin Laden wants the U.S. to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. That is supposedly his main gripe and reason for jihad, or at least it is his main propaganda point. The U.S., eager to avoid another attack, might have been open to the idea of withdrawal, but only under face saving conditions. But first, it could not very well do so with Saddam Hussein in power. The troops were on the Arabian peninsula in the first place to protect Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia) from Saddam. Hypothetically, someone may have thought, somewhere from 9/01-3/03, that if Saddam could be removed, and a stable democratic government could be put in place in Iraq, then the U.S. could withdraw from Saudi Arabia.

Had it worked out right, this would have been a way of meeting bin Laden's demand to get the infidels away from the holy sites that did not look weak or done out of intimidation. Perhaps the U.S. would not have withdrawn completely from the middle east, but rather reduced troops and relocated them from Saudi Arabia to a friendly Iraq (to appease the Saudi royals and Kuwaities by staying in the neighborhood). I wonder if this would have come to pass (planned from the get go or not) had the post-invasion period not gone disasterously wrong.