"If you accept that our mission in Iraq is a noble one to establish democracy and give Iraqis a life free from Saddam, then our actions must be fitting of nobility. We at least need to ID a target before we start shooting."

Your purpose for fighting the war in WWII was not to establish a democracy in Japan and Germany. The reason that Saddam invaded Kuwait was because he thought we would not use miltary power to oppose him. When Saddam was building up miltary forces to invade Kuwait, the US informed Kuwait and other countries in the region that he was preparing to attack them. These leaders said that Saddam was bluffing and that this was an Arab matter and asked the US not to interfere. After Kuwait was invaded, the Saudis asked the US to defend their country against potential Iraq aggression and the Arabs were willing to form a coalition to drive Saddam's forces out of Kuwait. After Iraq was defeated, Saddam signed a cease fire agreement. One of the conditions of the cease fire agreement was that Saddam would get rid of his WMD and the UN would verify this and that he would thereafter not develop and/or obtain WMD. This was an American demand because we have an interest in limiting and evenually getting rid of all WMD in the world. Legally, the US can not simply demand that a sovereign power limit it's miltary power, but if a WMD agreement are part of cease fire agreement then we do have the legal authority to make this demand. A cease fire agreement means that if Saddam did not comply with agreement, he would face the possiblity that countries could legally use miltary force to get Saddam to comply or simply continue the war that Saddam started by invading Kuwait.
When Saddam threw out the UN inspectors in 1998, he was obviously breaking this agreement, Clinton bombed Iraq as a response. Clinton could chosen to use ground forces to invade and change the regime. But at that time it was considered better to simply show Saddam a club and whack him a couple of times to show him that he was making a mistake. The idea was to keep him in a box, until he decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to comply with the cease fire agreement or we could find some means to change the regime.

After 911 our policy changed. We had to get serious about changing the situation in the middle east. We took action against Afghanistan because the leadership of the country refused to help curb a terrorist group that had claimed it was responsible for the 911 attacks. This refusal made the Afghanistan govt a party to an attack on America. Pakistan had a similar choice and instead of deciding to be America's enemy they chose to work with America [and the world] in addressing this terrorist threat.
In 2002 Saddam was given one last chance to comply with cease fire agreement or face invasion and overthrowing the regime. Saddam instead chose not to fully comply with the cease fire agreement.

We are establishing a democracy in Iraq, because that is what we always do when we occupy any country. We do not accept the racism viewpoint that Arab countries are *somehow* incapable of a democracy- freedom, prosperity, and justice for it's citizens.

It's probably true that if Arab countries were generally peaceful for a long enough time, that they would evenually transform themselves into democracies. There was no reason why Saddam could not have chosen a peaceful path- other than he and his supporter had some mad idea of wanting to dominate the middle east through the use of miltary power.