Your concern at the time was how Bush handled the aftermath of the Gulf war. Mine wasn't. The Iraqi opposition at the time was not a crowd that would have been any better for US interests than Sadam was. The Kurds couldn't hold power for a month without cutting each other's throats while at the same time driving Turkey away from the Western Camp. And the Marsh Arabs would have been sucked-up by the Iranian fundamentalists in a Tehran minute and accomplished the same damn thing through the mosques in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that we went to war with Sadam over. IMHO, Bush-I's decision not to move on Baghdad and to simply attempt to isolate Sadam and allow time for some secular, Sunni based opposition to develop inside Iraq was the best of several distasteful options.I don't blame Bush I for not getting a good outcome on getting rid of Saddam. There were no good choices, as you suggest.
I DO blame Bush I for his maladroit policy that got us into the Gulf War in the first place. And he shouldn't have encouraged the rebels if he wasn't going to back them up.
I think our present mess stems largely from all that.
You won't find me saying anything good about Clinton now, count on that.
Walt