Just because you assert this does not make it so. We wanted to keep Saddam from making WMD. He gave us flack and resistance. So we imposed sanctions... and the sanctions worked.

You can dispute whether the sanctions were morally preferable to war, but the fact that they worked at all invalidates your point. There are options other than "war" and "do nothing."

I dispute notthing of the sort since that was not really the issue at hand. You breezed past your own advocacy, however. The devil in the details here--since all such policy is always more nuanced than any of us like to remember--is that only the annoyace and threat of "intervention", a code term of heap of military trouble, is what kept Hussein in check, according to better thinkers and analysts than you or me. Even if in fact "kept in check" and "sanctions worked" is what you're arguing here. That is NOT exactly the case. The aforementioned Duelfer Report, the final word we know of (and FactCheck), is that Hussein wanted these WMD back and was in reality in a "waiting game" to see if he could outlast the scrutiny of the UN. His disposal of the WMD (more likely shipped out to Syria) was true but not due to mere "sanctions" that occured in some kind of non-military vacuum---but under extreme duress. The fact that no one remembers or likes to talk about this anymore is beside the point. The M.A.D. policy (which was never official doctrine, contrary to popular belief) that held the Soviets at bay didn't fire the first ICMD at the Kremlin but nontheless it was understood that the co-operation here was also under duress.

This is what I mean by "teeth"---the threat of action can be the same as action.

Elsewhere the other questions are unanswered. When to intervene and not? When we only use blue helmeted UN warriors to give things an internationalist flair, since it is apparently evil to go things alone? If US troops get their moms upset or get killed even in numbers but a fraction of WWII levels in a single Ima Jima run? When things are good and nothing turns sour and politicians don't complain or compare our troops to the Nazi SS? Only if kids are starving due to tribal warfare and the decapitation festivals are due to diamond mining but not Islamic terror lords or Saddamic justice brigades?