Len,

>>>Following the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein agreed to leave Kuwait & drop all claims to sovreignty over Kuwait, in return for support for US support for a peace deal between Israel & Palestine. Following Sept 11, Afghanistan agreed to hand-over Bin Laden if the US showed the evidence they had against him. In both cases your government refused & started a war which killed many people. Why ? I would suggest that one reason would be that it would be seen to be giving in, a small surrender of some degree of power, may be one of the same reasons Arafat declined.
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>>Are you referring to the Wye River Accord? IMO a complete waste of good paper. The problem is that it's based upon a fundamentaly flawed position regarding the nature of mankind. There really are some people who simply want to kill. Man is not fundamentally 'good', the faulty presumption.
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>>The Palestinians also agreed to cease their hostilities didn't they?
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>>The Afghanistans didn't hand bin Laden over, did they? They were repeatedly warned, weren't they. Candidly I think they thought that G Bush was B Clinton. I suppose to their supprise they found that he said what he meant and meant what he said - something I'll gladly admit is not commonin political arenas. <g>
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>>Saddam was also suppose dto let us in to inspect. He hindered that as well - particularly when proof positive was discovered he wa shiding stuff. Please make sure you tell both sides here... <s>
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>Your missing the point. You asked why the Palestinians accept an offer of 95% of what they wanted. In response, I asked why your presidents didn't accept offers that gave them 100% of what they want, in return for something.
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>None of them wanted to be seen to be backing down & losing face.
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>Re. Afghanistan - not exactly a success was it. Unless I'm missing something, replacing the Taliban wasn't on the agenda until they stood up against Bush, the idea was to get Bin Laden - that hasn't been achieved.

Well, I'd say it's been a great success so far. We're only seeing about 60% of what's going on from everything I can see. The Taliban was on the agenda from the very start as they housed bin Laden. They were given the opportunity to demonstrate on what side they stood, which they did, so we just kept our word.

I think that they erred in thinking that Mr. Bush would be as weak as Mr. Clinton was. I suppose this often confuses our enemies. Candidly, while I think that about 90% of the television shows that emminate from here are pure garbage it does help confuse people like bin Laden. <g>