re: Tom: You are getting long on words, short on content here.
You are willing to bet that Saddam had reformed. Bush and our allies were not.
As for containing him by stationing tens of thousands of troops in Qatar, or on ships offshore, for a decade, that's just asinine. And as soon as we left, it would have been business as usual again.
When you have two world powers trying to kill everyone who is an American, that you make them stop, and you do that by defeating them over and over on the field of battle, outproducing them and generally whipping them as hard as you can until they stop, and stop in a manner that promises that they will never be able to do it [slaughter americans] again. Was that plainly enough put for you?
Works for me. I assume at some point it will work in Iraq too.