After 9/11, the gloves were off, period. When the POTUS is getting intelligence - which he doesn't go and get himself, scrub himself, etc, he depends on the system under him to do that: This is a F'ing given btw - that says a current dictator is pursuing WMD, and said dictator is known scumbag, and not only is a known scumbag, but a scumbag who plays the system repeatedly - meaning, he'll just keep playing it to buy time - it's time to stop F'ing around.
Saddam, and his sons, had a free pass to GTFO. They wanted to do what they'd always done, play the game. Except, this time, POTUS wasn't playing. Apart from removing Saddam&Co, changing Iraq (and all that goes along with that), that was the message that needed to be sent to that region.
The problem is, little whiners want to collectively whine because they don't want their news feeds to have bad news on it, want conflicts to be solved with one relatively cheap Tomahawk missle, want bad guys to just be nice, want all these things, so they can just concentrate on Dancing with the Stars...oh, and hating Bush because he has a western accent and doesn't speak well publically, and beat their robot Gore (who's such an honest individual, he goes on to run the biggest scam yet, Scam and Trade).
But keep on the WMD kick, whatever you need to do to keep that Cup O Rage full....
Chuck