OK, this nice little fictional conversation between a hawk and a dove sums up my confusion right about now as well.
PN: But I thought many of our allies, including Israel, were in violation of more security council resolutions than Iraq.WM: It's not just about UN resolutions. The main point is that Iraq could have weapons of mass destruction...
The correct answer is "Iraq's situation is unique, because it agreed to disarm, or be disarmed. And more importantly, the UN promised to disarm Iraq if it did not disarm itself. No other nation is in such a position."
And then:
PN: But I thought Iraq did not have any long range missiles for attacking us or our allies with such weapons.WM: The risk is not Iraq directly attacking us, but rather terrorists networks that Iraq could sell the weapons to.
Actually, Iraq does have missiles prohibited by Resolution 687 (April 1991).
PN: A pre-emptive first strike does sound bad. But didn't our ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, know about and green-light the invasion of Kuwait?WM: Let's deal with the present, shall we?
...
Actually, no, no one in the US "green-lighted" an invasion of Kuwait. What happened is that Kuwait and Iraq had a dispute over Kuwait slant-drilling, taking oil from Iraq. We told Iraq something to the effect that we would not prevent them from taking action to protect their oil, something along the lines of going into Kuwait to shut off the offending wells. That is a far cry from approving of an invasion, a taking over of the country.
There is a lot more of this, all amounting to the same thing: it's someone who is clearly biased against the war intentionally making a weak case for war to make his position look better.
