You're comparing apples to oranges. The answer to your original question is that the actions & war plan Bush 41 and Bush 43 used were different. Bush 41 had enough brains to realize that he couldn't go directly into Baghdad b/c the resistence was too strong. A coaltion was used in the '91 war because Iraq invaded the sovereign state/nation of Kuwait. The U.N. and its members felt that this was wrong and would be a threat to the Middle East.

Kerry not supporting the decision to invade in 1991 had nothing to do with the having a coalition. It was based on Bush 41's methods of conducting the war. And I would argue that both Bush 41 and Kerry were wrong. Bush 41 failed by not getting rid of Saddam. Worse, he failed the country of Iraq by decimating it and leaving their country with little, if any, infrastructure. Kerry was wrong in not supporting the effort back then.

The major difference now is that Bush 43 went in without the support his father had. He told other nations that if they didn't help in the war effort, they wouldn't be helping in the reconstruction effort. That turned many allies off. Do you think Tony Blair isn't sweating every day until his election comes? The majority of Brits were opposed to their country's involvement.

Bush's mistake, while he'll never admit it, is exactly what Kerry said in the debates: we won the war but had no plan to win the peace. What is happening now is exactly what Dick Cheney said in 1992:

"The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?... And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.... All of a sudden you've got a battle you're fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques....

Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.... Now what kind of government are you going to establish? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shi'ia government, or a Sunni government, or maybe a government based on the old Baathist Party, or some mixture thereof? You will have, I think by that time, lost the support of the Arab coalition that was so crucial to our operations over there."

The conservatives like to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper. Yet the statement above by Cheney is a complete contradiction to how he and his imbicile running mate are handling Iraq today. Bush did a 180 on the creation of a Homeland Security Dept after he oversaw the disaster of 9/11 and he lied about trying to investigage 9/11 by blocking the 9/11 Commission for over 1 year.

If I got drafted, there is no way that I would go to Iraq. But my Dad never had the political strings to get me out of combat. The reason that Iraq in such chaos is completely because of Bush's lack of an exit strategy and his inability to understand the situation. I'm not dying for a country that doesn't want a democracy. Bush & most of his administration proved that they weren't willing to serve in Vietnam. Cheney "had a million other things to do." Don't all of us?All of you Bush supporters like to talk tough while Bush plays cowboy and says "bring 'em on." Go fight over in Iraq if you believe in Bush so strongly - that way we don't have to even worry about a draft. Place your lives and your blind faith in Bush and see where it gets you. If you do, then I'll thank you for your service.