The U.N. and authorization for war...

I have been doing more digging around the documents from 2002 & 2003 on the issue of whether or not the U.S. was acting with or without U.N. authorization in the 2003 Iraq War. The most relevant U.N. resolution was resolution 1441, the full text of which is here. Amazingly, it really is as vague as I had feared. If I read it correctly (and while I can read congressional bills pretty easily, U.N. resolutions are much harder to parse), it does not say that military operations are allowed, but it also does not say they are not allowed. It merely says that "serious consequences" would occur if Iraq does not fully disarm and allow inspectors unfettered access to Iraq. There is no place where it clearly spells out what those might or might not be. Hanz Blix originally said that he had not received full cooperation, but later on said it was too early to say. The U.S. (prodded by Britain) tried to get a second resolution from the security council more clearly spelling out an authorization to use force, but it soon became clear that it was impossible to get one. Many point out that earlier (from the early 90s) resolutions gave open clearance to use military force (and clearly Clinton did use air-strikes against Iraq many times in the 1990s). However, in most legal systems the most recent bills or resolutions generally override the earlier ones when they are both on the same topic. (otherwise, prohibition would still be in force in the U.S.) So it's really unclear to me what exactly what legal effect this resolution had if any.
So in the end, technically, I think we did have authorization... or at least we had not been told explicitly that we could not. This is much like how technically I personally would have been allowed to hit Iraq since the U.N. had never said I couldn't. Do I think our foreign policy need always have U.N. approval? No, I think there could be cases where we should be able to act unilaterally... However, this is now a pretty awful case study for this principle.
For the record, in 2003, I was very much on the fence as to whether or not we should go into Iraq. I had a strong feeling that the reasons why the administration claimed we were going into Iraq were bogus, but I still had some unreasonable hope that somehow we could do a good job and legitimately help out the Iraqi people. I really underestimated what a wretched job that this administration would do unfortunately.