“Bush Sr made it very clear he only had the mandate to free Kuwait, once that objective was accomplished,”

Absolutely agree, and that was also because the UN action to free a country from an aggressor (ie Kuwaite from Saddam) was an obvious, sane, normal thing to do. Invade Iraq and remove the regime was not considered, because the UN and the US wasn’t in the business of creating countries.

Which is why I don’t understand the US’ position over the current invasion… sure Saddam was a very bad person, and he wasn’t doing Iraq any good… of course most of their problems stemmed from sanctions, but at least he was an Iraqi. This time around the aggressor was the US and the UK, and their reason was that some time in the vague future Saddam might become dangerous again.
Action against a blatant invasion of a small neighbour mobilised the sensible world (at the time OBL is reported to have offered to provide the men if Saudi Arabia had provided the money to get saddam out of Kuwaite… an offer that was rejected)… plus a few other groups that hated the US probably disagreed with the action taken as well… but there is no convincing them.
Action against an impoverished and greatly weakened Iraq, already on its knees in case in some unstated time in the future the leader (whom everyone agrees is not good for Iraq or the region) might somehow get into a position to hold the world economy to ransom… sounds like a mini series plot to me… and it probably has Dolph Lundgren in it…