A Fatherly Voice from the Past

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurredincalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq....there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see,violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern forhandling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed theprecedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route,the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." -- George Herbert Walker Bush, from his memoir, A World Transformed (1998)