Which is why I used the France bombing the US scenario. You've already said, Americans wouldn't view that as war- or have I misundertood you? As long as France were being selective about which targets they bombed on American soil, it wouldn't be war. (is what I gather from your comments)
War is not an intellectual exercise. I disagree that it is dependent upon what the media calls it- or the politicians for that matter. The politicians no longer declare war yet we make war all the time.
But getting to Iraq, this isn't some odd intellectual definition. We're talking about our military physically present in another country, destroying what we will, killing when we will. If this is not war, I wouldn't know what was. And it has been that way since 1990.
Particularly if the situation were reversed. If the army, air force and navy of France were operating militarily within the physical integrity of the United States, that would be war.
they would even have called the embargo that cost the lives of 1000s Iraqis an act of war.
And they would be correct. There is another word for this embargo (or 'sanctions' as some called it)- it is called siege and siege is, indeed, a form of warfare.
I can find no objective way to determine from what you're saying when war in Iraq has and has not taken place. From your explanations, there have been sporadic outbursts of war over a long period of time. This seems a form of intellectual gymnastics to me.
It is a much simpler explanation, when you stand back and look at it over a long period of time, to acknowledge that this has been one long war. At times high intensity, at times low intensity. But always war, always there. Just because it was very lopsided does not mean it was not war. I can find no defining point when it was not war. Patrolling the no fly zones is just a pretty way of saying that we were occupying large chunks of Iraq with our military, destroying targets we saw fit at our whim. Sanctions, as a I noted earlier, is just a pretty, publically palatable term for 'siege'- which is warfare. Enforcing UN Resolutions is a nice way of dressing up the act of bombing Iraq when we saw fit (Operation Desert Fox being a prime example). This is war. It was war. It has been war since 1990.
It is the simplest explanation for what has gone on in Iraq over the past decade.