Your role as BBS Grammarian is causing you to read way too much into these terms.

If I thought that GWB was writing his own speeches, I'd agree with you. (Edit: For example, I didn't read anything into GWB's horribly inappropriate extemporaneous use of the term ``crusade'' in reference to this invasion, as I don't think that he has the quickness about him for that impropriety to have occurred to him.) The average American doesn't really know what sovereign means, and I think it makes it that much the worse.

But speechwriters are usually very bright people, with an incredible flair for language. Honestly, I don't know the current speechwriter, so I could be wrong. But speeches of that importance go through, I'm sure, everyone in the administration, and I can't imagine they don't go through it with a fine-tooth comb. The fact that not one person brought up that sovereign means something that they didn't want to imply, or that any people who did so were overruled on it I think speaks volumes.

And the U.N. was not going to enforce those serious consequences.

That's not my argument. If the administration thought that the world had said something and that it had become the US's resposibility due to the rest of the world's inaction, then it's still not sovereign. I'm not arguing the correctness or incorrectness of the UN's wishy-washiness. I'm arguing the attitude of those in the Bush administration with the only evidence I've got.