Bush v.s. Iraq--1st Term

In light of a recent thread response by woiyo, I was curious what Bush was doing about the vicious dictator in Iraq during his first term as President.

This is not a loaded question, I am sincerely inquiring what he was doing...since the latest justification for war (since all others have proven either weak or just plain false) is now, as woiyo points out, that the Iraq conflict was a continuence of the Kuwait invasion by Iraq and Iraq's refusal to comply with the terms of surrender.