I believe the reason Clinton got away with bombing Iraq is because he did it much less low-key than Bush is doing. Clinton didn't do the "war" thing. But it is a different situation. Bush is trying to rally the UN and other nations to war... the key word being "war." It's given the protestors too much time to organize, rationalize, hypothosize, and criticize.

If Bush would have attacked this situation from a different front, more convertly, he would have won over the American people, and other nations, more easily.