Food For Thought, 1999: Why GHWB left Saddam in Iraq

[Flammable Materials]

Archived from a 1999 Usenet post on Google:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=36e13b1e.1182849%40news.pacbell.net&output=gplain



"I'll never forget," he said, when Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell "came over and said it was time to end the fighting -- mission accomplished. I said, 'Do Schwarzkopf and the commanders agree.'"

Bush said that within 30 seconds Powell had Schwarzkopf on the phone
assuring him that the mission had been accomplished.

"I don't believe in mission creep," he continued. "Had we gone into
Baghdad -- we could have done it, you guys could have done it, you
could have been there in 48 hours -- and then what?

"Which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in
perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerilla war to find the
most-secure dictator in the world?

"Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I,
unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the
stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho?" he asked.
"We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power --
America in an Arab land -- with no allies at our side. It would have
been disastrous."

Bush said, "We don't gain the size of our victory by how many innocent kids running away -- even though they're bad guys -- that we can slaughter. ... We're American soldiers; we don't do business that way."

"Am I happy that S.O.B. is still there?" Bush asked, then answered,
"No."

[knowbody0]

1. schwarzkofp was a prophet

[drunkdriver-in-chief]

2. That's not the real reason bush41 left saddam in power

The plan was to use him later on as pretext for another war. The Bush gang loves war - that's how they've made their billions.

[Flammable Materials]

3. True or not, they are words out of the mouth of GHWB ...

... that you can put in the face of annoying wingnuts.