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I think it is not so much window dressing as the battle over "so let it be written, so let it be done", i.e. how the war will be looked at in future diplomatic confrontations and conflicts. A large part of it may be a temperance of the doctrine of pre-emption. We definitely don't want every country or tribe in the world with a gripe to be attacking their enemies and then claiming "Well the US made it ok". We want to be able to say we went every extra mile to accomplish a task that everybody agrees needs to be done before we took matters into our own hands and beheaded the snake.

I hadn't really thought of this until about 5 minutes ago. I hate diplomacy, could never be a diplomat, but if I were the President I might realize that it is the only way to minimize the impact of the law of unintended consequences.