Is that so hard to understand? The guy's a bully. He pushes people around. Those under him, and other nations if he thinks he can get away with it.
And when would he have felt that he could get away with anything anymore?
Even using you simplistic standard, this is the question that matters: when will he have felt that he could attack his weaker neighbors and get away with it?
In short, what you argue is that deterrence would not give him the message that if he ever attacked anyone again, he was toast..that for some reasons you have yet to enumerate containment would be unable to stop him form acting and thus he had to be removed, as far as the agurment that he was a threat to the region was concerned.
I argue that containement had shown him that his only worthwhile avenue of territorial expansion was permenantly closed.
To finish off with you "bully"argument: how does one stop a bully? One stand up to them..well, we did just that in 1991. We stood up to the bully and beat the crap out of him. And for 12 years he never did anyting again. You argued that standing up to the bully was not enough, that we had to get rid of he bully completely. This is what you have failed to argue convincingly, if at all.
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