President George W. Bush has fixated on getting rid of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, one way or another, ever since he moved into the White House.

The tone was set as far back as February 16, 2001, less than a month after Bush was sworn in, with major US-British bombing raids on command posts outside Baghdad.

Six days later, the new president began what has since become a mantra in the administration: if Iraq did not get rid of its weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein would reap the consequences.

The warnings mounted and after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, a war on Iraq became part of the larger strategy of a fighting terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism.

The steady march towards war has seen several crucial stages.

In January 2002, Bush said that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were part of an "axis of evil", a phrase that showed the more hawkish elements of the US government in the ascendency.

In August that year, Vice President Dick Cheney, maintaining the administration's political hardline, spoke a number of times on Iraq, leaving less and less doubt that the United States wanted military action against Baghdad.

Hardliners pushed for leaving the United Nations out of the equation.

As US pressure mounted, Secretary of State Colin Powell, an administration pragmatist, nevertheless convinced Bush to go to the United Nations and work on a new resolution on Iraq.

Bush gave a speech to the United Nations on September 12 calling it for it to take tough action against Iraq's threat or face irrelevance.

But war remained an integral part of US strategy. And Washington remained determined to move without UN approval if necessary.

Weeks of bitter negotiations resulted in a victory for Washington: the 15 members of the UN Security Council on November 8 unanimously approved Resolution 1441 giving Iraq a last chance to disarm, or face "serious consequences" -- war.

But the text was ambiguous, and while diplomatic efforts were ramped up to persuade Iraq to meet its obligations, the United States began building up a formidable military presence around Iraq.

For months, Bush insisted that war would be a last resort, but his rhetoric ruled out the possibility of withdrawing the US war machine.

Even as the US economy struggled to pick up, and politicians began to mobilize for the 2004 presidential election, Bush placed his sights squarely on Iraq.

For Washington, overthrowing Saddam became the key to unlocking the political knots of the Middle East conflict and stabilizing the region.

The failure to capture terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, left Saddam as the administration's symbol of the global war on terror.

After several months, the condemnations of Iraq became increasing implacable.

UN weapons inspections were said to have accomplished little, and Iraq's concessions were systematically dismissed as a "willful charade" as Washington repeatdly linked Iraq to the al-Qaeda network behind the September 11 bombings.

Bush also has family honour to defend. He blames Saddam for an assassination attempt on President George Bush senior in April 1993 in Kuwait, but Bush junior has never presented his Iraq policy as a family vendetta.

Rather, for this religious US president, the war on Iraq has taken on messianic proportions.

"Free people will set the course of history, and free people people will keep the peace of the world. We go forward with confidence, because we trust in th power of human freedom to change life and nations," he said in a speech February 26.

"By the resolve and purpose of America, and of our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty." - Sapa-AFP