A World Transformed

[molly]

I just received this email from my friend titled "read and weep".

In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written five
years ago, George Herbert Walker Bush wrote the
following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam
Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred
incalculable 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 consciously trying to set a pattern for
handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going
in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the
United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the
precedent 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."

If only his son could read. :cry: