Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Do Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. ever talk politics? LOL	purplewings	09/02/04
As you watch the Republican Convention, listening to what the party has to say about domestic and foreign policy, present and future, thought you'd find the following perspective on Iraq interesting. In his memoirs, A World Transformed, published in September 1998, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the first 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 self-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.
Answered By		Answered On
kindj		09/02/04
12 years is a long time, and a lot can change. The circumstances now are different than in Gulf War 1, and to compare the two simply because they're the same geographic region is the first step to failure. Same country, totally different scenario. Same country, different war. Glad no one pushed that opinion in WW2. DK

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