The "power vacuum" is always a problem. Typically that has lead to appeasement . Not a good thing in my belief. I think if you asked Saddam now he would have played his cards differently. What was the alternative? Certainly there still is an argument that he had time to hide off his WMD's. Lets be honest here, he was given lots of advanced notice and had the equivilent of Western Australia (or let's say... Syria!) to hide them. Sat technology is great, but you can log onto a website right now and find when US military sat's are flying over your place..