>>>>>Duration of the cease fire was all up to Saddam depending on whether he was cooperating with the UN.
>
>>>>Only if you assume the first war was fought for the same reason(s) as the second, which it wasn't. Otherwise that's changing the rules mid-game.
>
>>>Well... no.
>>>Remember all the shell games he would play with the inspectors. He even had them removed from Iraq a couple of times. Why did he do that?
>
>>He didn't want the rest of the region to know he was helpless. Like you said, he was playing games - specifically, poker. He was bluffing his opponents.
>
>Well then, he was playing a deadly game with deadly consequences. I guess you can say that we called his "bluff"... and he lost.

Except that he was bluffing his neighbours. He didn't know at the time that the U.S. was at the table. He found that out later.