I agree with you 100%. But this also means that the "case" that was given to Congress may have had absolutely nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction.
Which is really the point here, isn't it?
No, I don't think that's the point at all. So what if the case which was given to Congress relied less on, exclusively, the "WMD" angle than the case given to the UN? Again, I have absolutely no problem with using and exploiting the UN for our gain. Do you?
[You're telling me that US soldiers in 1991 never were under any threat from WMDs all along?] Were they?
Weren't they?
If the U.S. effectively negated the threat of Saddam Hussein's WMDs in 1991 by agreeing to leave him in power
Who says that agreeing to leave him in power is what effectively negated his WMD threat? I thought you explained to me earlier that we made precise threats of what would happened if he used WMDs, and that's why he didn't.
why else would he refrain from using them? -- he had to know that there was an up--side
Yes, the up-side is that he wouldn't be nuked. And?
and you stated that the U.S. could have negated the threat of Saddam Hussein's WMDs in a similar manner in 2003, then we would have had to offer him something in return.
Right: we won't use nukes. That would have appealed to him. No?
Clearly we didn't offer to let him stay in power, so what was it?
Seriously, unless I'm totally missing your point, I thought it was obvious that our military leadership gets the message to enemy leaders that doing certain things will be considered such no-nos that all options (meaning "nukes") will be put on the table. That's what I thought you meant by all this, now I'm really not sure.