First, thank you for the thoughful responses.

I have been considering this a fair ammount, since i am something of a student of the Vietnam war, both before and after US forces were involved.

I don't find the situations entirely similar, but its quite clear Vietnam stands as a prime example of a palpably inferior force achieving it's objectives in spite of facing a hugely superior army.

Quote Originally Posted by PanzerJager
As for false pretenses, what were those in Vietnam and what are those in Iraq? People understood Vietnam was about stopping communism in southeast Asia.

People also understand that Saddam had to go for a number of reasons, and that he created a climate of fear about his supposed WMDs.
In Vietnam, it was quite clear to to the American govt that Vietnam was about presenting the spread of communism, but the Vietnamese understood an entirely different picture. To them, communism was a form of nationalism, and no matter how hard they tried, the Americans couldn't convince the locals of the American narrative.

In terms of the trigger, there were two alleged incidents that started the bombing raids on the North, and ended with full scale military deployment. these incidents were alleged attacks on US warships. the first incident seems pretty cut and dried, the US defence dept recovered North Vietnamese shell fragments from the ship involved, but the second was the one that triggered the order, and that has long been shown to be highly dubious.