Saddam’s military was severely constrained by no-fly zones and sanctions.

Evidence

Detractors argued that the administration mischaracterized the planned intervention as a “preemptive” war to disarm and supplant a regime whose power to wage war actually was constrained by inadequate military forces and by severe economic sanctions. After the first Gulf war of 1991, Saddam was boxed in by no-fly zones in the northern Kurdish region and the southern Shiite region, with continuous aerial surveillance by American, British, and French war planes and bombardment of any defense and communication facilities that fired on those planes. Some nations questioned the U.S. administration’s justification of the priority of the threat and the timing of a preemptive strike against Iraq, which did not seem to pose much of a threat under such stringent containment. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2356