' "You are both missing the point. This is about Iraq agreement to terms of ending the war. If Iraq had not signed on the dotted line, we wouldn't be having the resulting sanctions and no fly zones. Without this understanding it's impossible to understand why the US is taking it's current position- you would think the US some power crazed nation."

Gbaikie: Good to hear from you.

I have actually argued against this point elsewhere, possibly in the same thread (with the same capitalization as before ;) '

That's nice, maybe I'll see it- I haven't read all posts, though I don't know if I'll find the time to read them all.

"The COALITION was involved in that surrender agreement. If the COALITION is against this war, how can it be about enforcing the terms of the surrender- If we really wanted to be the sole arbiters of the surrender agreement, then we should not have forged to coalition in the first place."

I'm not sure whether "the coalition" is against enforcing whatever agreement it made. But generally speaking as far as I'm aware of how law is usually works: an agreement becomes the law. As long as an agreement is legal is becomes law. For instance normally I don't owe someone say 10,000 dollars, but if make an agreement to pay 10,000 dollars to someone (and it's a legal contract) then I according to the law must pay 10,000 dollars. If I write a check & it doesn't cash, then I haven't fulfilled the contract- in fact not only haven't fulfilled the agreement, but I also have committed fraud. Now if an agreement allowed one member of the group nullify the obligation, that means I could give one member less than total, but more than would be their share as part of the group. This wouldn't be a very good contract. It's more likely that all parties must be satified. Therefore say if Egypt was part of this coalition, and say US wasn't interested in enforcing it, Egypt could elect to demand this agreement was satified- go to war using Saddam's violation of the agreement as justification for that war.

"In any case, why now and not 2, 6 or 10 years ago- 3 different administrations. Why now? "

We have been trying to get Iraq to get rid of it's WMD since 91. We imposing sanctions and controlling Iraq's air space. In 1998 Clinton Adminstration change policy to regime change as only viable solution. After 9/11, I suppose Bush "revisited" this issue. I imagine that a fair amount of study went into various options. I imagine that a lot of Intelligence sources were tapped, I imagine a lot of closed intelligence session were conducted, I imagine that a lot of work was done by the state dept in regards to planning with other countries (probably a lot of work with countries in the region- and those countries needing time to adjust to a "new situation" and trying to put forward their agenda in the "new situation").
What I have heard from TV interviews by Saudi leaders is one thing they feared is that the US will not follow through. Basically the US would get to a situation something like what we are in right now, then decide to back down (thereby leaving the entire region in an even worse condition).

Got to go, maybe I'll get to rest of post later.
-gb