Mark: "The US has spent a lot of time and money trying to make war as surgical as possible so that the fewest number of innocent bystanders and even colaborating civilians are harmed as possible."

Raoul:
"Sorry, but I don't believe that; if it were true, the US should have sent a highly trained, motivated, discreet and paid commando to Baghdad with the specific goal to neutralize Saddam. That would have spared
the lives of thousands! If that was impossible, then wait until the regime would change on its own."

Raoul you watch too many of those "James Bond 007" and/or "Rambo" type movies. There is no technology that would make this possible. Your best chance would be largely dependent on training. There is no reason that this training could have done a thousands years ago- if it were possible to have chance of being successful- technology or expense isn't the main factor. So the question is, where in history has this type of operation been successful? Why have we not seen this work? Why for instance, drop couple A-bomb on Japan if this type of operation would work. Why did Europe fight all those wars?
If there is any chance of this working it would require an inside job and Saddam as the head of previous Security [and had first gained power through assasination] had twisted the whole government to thwart this from happenning- he really feared no other type of overthrow.

Ok so forget about how hard this would be to accomplish and the risk to those attempting it. Let's say you could have a magic button and use it to kill Saddam. That wouldn't get you anywhere- one of his sons would take over. Now, sure everyone who be very impressed with this button- but you really don't have such a button. So say you kill Saddam and his sons. Then someone else who is part of security system would take over. Maybe this would change things.

Actually come to think of it we did have this magic button- all we needed was to know where Saddam was. And we tried to do this. It was fairly low risk to the inside operators and it failed. And once it failed, the chance of making another successful attempt was worst because the inside operators were at higher risk and Saddam could take extreme precautions such a living in a rat hole.

Also look at what would have happenned if France had not said it would veto. That would have given the coalition more time- Saddam couldn't rule from a rat hole. He could spend months or years worring about the magic button, this kind of pressure would have either caused him to cooperate or he would have had a much higher chance of having his location known.
Now killing Saddam and having the possiblity of the next guy following a similar fate would have a strong influence on making the leadership decide that fully cooperating with the inspectors was a small price to pay.