Why did they not simply give in to coalition demands? In hindsight, it certainly seems like they didn't have a chance of winning once the war started.
Did they have a better chance then it seemed? Did they believe their own hype?
Saddam Hussein was never a military strategist, as one of his generals explained in an interview for PBS Frontline's documentary about the 2003 war: LINK. Saddam was ordering the military in all the wrong directions and didn't pull them back to fight a war of attrition that the general favored against superior forces. In the 1990-91 war, Saddam assumed the coalition invasion would come from the sea into Kuwait, rather than from the south and west, and the coalition did it's best to give him the impression of a sea invasion.