As much as I ma able to put it together from so many different reports and investigations and such, here is the story on Iraq.

Gulf War I ends, Saddam is sanctioned. First he keeps sending weapons inspectors on wild goose chases. Eventually he realizes that the Oil-for-Food program can make him a lot of money, and allow him to bribe various officials to keep the international community from coming down on him. He dismantles his weapons programs, as inspectors are getting to close to the truth. He mothballs the production machines in such a way that he could restart his programs on just about a moment's notice. Supposedly he could have had mustard gas ready to use within days of restarting his chemical weapons programs. In order to retain his veneer of power, he does not let on to the world that he actually dismantled anything. The U.S. believes him, and decides something must be done. He cannot continue to flaunt international law and get away with it. The Oil-for-Food bribes are beginning to work, as enthusiasm for continuing the sanctions is waning among the countries that recieved the most on bribes (Russia, France, Germany). As soon as they get rid of the sanctions, he could begin building nukes, his dream! But the U.S. is putting pressure on the world to take action. Russia, France, and Germany block any UN action using their veto powers. The U.S. gets a bunch of other countries together and invades Iraq without official UN approval, though a strict interpretation of the various Iraq-related UN resolutions shows that the U.S. was actually following through with what the UN had said they would do numerous times, i.e. the resolutions threatened action if Saddam did not satisfy inspectors, which he did not. So that makes the whole "illegal war" thing a whole bunch of bullshit! The U.S. ruins Saddam's plans to rebuild his weapons program. That's pretty much pre-emptive, which fits in exactly with Bush's "Bush Doctrine" and belies the "Bush lied" crowd.

Basically if it weren't for us, Saddam would be inching ever closer to getting the UN to remove the sanctions, which means that he may have had nukes by now. Thank god someone was willing to take action to stop the madman!