Too bad when even the president doesn't know the truth about foreign "intelligence." We were still operating under the fiction that the Soviets had the capability and the will to engage us in a war to save their client state.

What's that they say about hindsight?

erp:

Reagan knew they were a paper tiger, how could Bush not?

I'm afraid you flatter me that I would know the answer to that. Maybe he was told, but didn't believe his own intelligence. Maybe he thought Reagan was an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. Whatever, it was certainly the CW at the time.

My unpolitical junkie husband often remarks that Bush père is the only man he knows of who held a series of top positions in the UN, CIA, was VP, and President and never left a footprint.

erp:

They knew there was no threat, they just preferred Saddam dominating the Shi'a.

Well, the Iraqis effed-up the war because they were eff-ups.

We eff-ed up Gulf War One because civilians ran it. We would have lost the Was of 1812, if the civilians had run that one, as Madison even tried.

The terms granted to Iraq at the end of GW I, were beyond even what they had hoped to obtain. That we even let an unsurrendered enemy army escape undestroyed was a travesty.

That's the way "realists" operate.

Agree about the eternal shame part, but the suggestion that deposing him then wouldn't have lead to some difficulties even so is just wack. Easier in '91, granted--but that doesn't mean it would have been a trouble-free paradise.

I thought it was the UN mandate thing. In hindsight, no doubt a mistake.

Kirk:

No American occupation, no once backstabbed Shi'ites, no sanction-devastated populace...

We have so much troubles even now when over 100,000 of our troops are in Iraq. If we had helped the Iraqis overthrow Saddam decade and a half ago, Iran would have taken the Shia south, the Kurks would fight the Arabs for Kirkuk, and declare independence, supported by the Kurds in Turkey, and in Syria. Turkey would have to fight to keep their Kurds in line. Syria would have to help their Baathists in the Sunni triangle. The left and the right would decry Bush I for causing the conflagration, and not leaving Saddam alone. The genius of Clinton was: do nothing, kick the can down the road, and rake in millions for being the Saudis' advisor, making tons of dough for himself. The Arabs are happy, the Europeans are happy, the left are happy. Brilliant.

ic:

And there'd have been, in that worst-case scenario, a greater Kurdistan and a Shi'astan, with the Sunni either cowed or purged and Syria destabilized with enemies to the East. There was no downside.

Our Arab allies feared a resurgent Iran in the face of Iraq's defeat and put much political pressure on us to not overthrow him. My understanding it was part of the deal that forged the 91 coalition that we not push too far.

However, we should not have ended the ground war until we could have dismantled Saddam's WMD programs ourselves. Choosing to not rely on our forces already there for voluntary compliance by Saddam was idiotic.

It was Bush who decided to end the ground war - not anyone else. He liked the soundbite of the "100 Hour War" and failed to secure the peace we needed.

That error was compounded by treachery when Bush called upon the Iraqis to arise and then did nothing to help them. That was a gross moral failing and it stained America's honor.

Absent some new threat, any President afterwards would have had trouble finding a new pretext to fix Bush's mistake. It takes immense effort to mobilize for war half a globe away. The only possible one that might have done it was revelation that Saddam tried to assasinate Bush.

The Gulf War ended terribly. We failed to remove WMD programs. We lost moral credibility with the slaughter of the Shi'ites and Kurds. Because Saddam was still there, we had to keep troops in Iraq which agitated the Saudi's. And it forced us into the farce of the debates on renewing sanctions, which only made our threat credibility weaker. This is a case where idiotic measures squandered a real victory in the field.

Something not discussed was how these errors contributed to the problems we face now. Determining what should have been done in 1991 would no doubt enlighten many on the lessons of history. This hasn't happened because it's in no one's interest to. The Democrats probably feel that it would show that unless we capitulated, a showdown with Saddam was inevitable; while Republicans want to avoid the association with a failed policy they created.

And it demonstrated terrible contempt for the Iraqi people to think that after all that they'd greet us as liberators in '03.