Unfortunately Guest282RA, the situation the USA found itself in in both Afghanistan and Iraq has a great deal to do with Bill Clinton and his Administrations handling of things, which were ineffectual, indiscriminate and ill-considered.

The anti-Bush, anti-war, chattering left on this Forum have worked themselves into a lather bleating about how all the muslim Arabs hate us because of what Bush has done. Utter crap, they hated you long before that, they declared their war on you long before that, or was the attack in Beirut and the first attack on the WTC in 1993 just a figment of everyones imagination. Oh, hang on wait a minute we'll probably get some TWAT post and tell us that that attack had something to do with some dark sinister corporation's scheme to further their goal of world domination that was only possible because George W Bush's second cousin fifteen times removed knew someone who's Aunt's brother was a janitor in the building.

Subsequent to the signing of the cease-fire agreement at Safwan and issue of United Nations Security Councile resolution 687, of which paragraph 33 states:

"Declares that, upon official notification by Iraq to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council of its acceptance of the provisions above, a formal cease-fire is effective between Iraq and Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait in accordance with resolution 678 (1990);"

Hope you all note that the UN is not mentioned, whereas Iraq, Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait are. That, for those a bit slow on the uptake, clearly states the parties involved in the cease-fire and for the benefit of Ron, Guest282RA, Dianavan and CarolC, shows that the UN ain't one of them. If any of the signatories to that cease-fire held Iraq to be violation of the terms agreed, then they were free to take whatever action they saw necessary to bring Iraq into a state of compliance, that was what "grave consequences" meant in 1991, roughly the same as "serious consequences" was taken to mean in 2002.

For Guest282RA's benefit the following is the list of occassions when this was invoked subsequent to issue of UNSC Resolution 687 on 3rd April 1991:

1991 - Summer: Royal Marines inserted into Northern Kurdish region to provide a protective screen to permit Kurdish refugees to flee Saddam's forces

1991 - Start of Northern and Southern "No-Fly" Zones to deter air attacks on Kurdish and Shia population of Iraq

1996 - Intensification of Air effort within "No-Fly" Zones in response to Iraqi interference with UNSCOM inspection efforts

1998 - UNSCOM Inspectors withdrawn followed by "Desert Fox"

2002 - Summer: Build up of US and Coalition Troops in Kuwait

2002 - September: Saddam invites return of UN inspectors (UNMOVIC)

2003 - March: US and Coalition Troops invade Iraq.

No "UN Authorisation" for any of them - TRUE?

The reason for that is that no "UN Authorisation" was ever required.