[WhiskeyPapa]

This is what I've been saying all along. It's never been hidden from view. A -lot- of our current problems go right back to George Bush, Sr.

Walt

[IncPen]

Clinton-era ping

[JohnGalt]

I think it goes to the end of the Cold War and the failure of the CIA to extinguish certain assets like Saddam and Osama amongst dozens of others.

[Ditto]

But U.S. aircraft controlling the skies let the Iraqis fly combat helicopters to suppress the revolts.

Not true Walt. Storm'n Norman got snookered at first and agreed to allow chopper flights since all the roads and bridges between Baghdad and the south were out. But he also ordered them shot down after they started blasting the hell out of the Marsh Arabs.

There is a lot of myth surrounding the events post Gulf I, and this is but one of them. The fact is that we did not know at the time if any of the competing anti-Saddam factions would have been a better deal than leaving a weakened Saddam left in power. What would a Kurd leadership have done to the Sunni population? Would Turkey be forced to act to control their own Kurds? Would a Shiite dominated Iraq have merged with the crazy Mullahs in Tehran? We still don't know the answer to those questions. What we did know at the time was that there was no way we could stay there for very long to help sort things out. What we do know today is that we will be there for a long time.

[4CJ]

A -lot- of our current problems go right back to George Bush, Sr.

Nonsense - the problems were there long before. A lot of problems can be traced to conquests at varous times and nations, especially by England in her colonial heyday. Many conquered nations consider us - the US of A - to be equivalent targets, and responsible for the "sins" of the British.

Bush the Elder should have contained (you know what I mean) Saddam, just as Clinton should have done. By failing to act, Clinton just passed the buck on to W. Just as if W had failed to act, the responsibilty would fall to his sucessor.

Personally, I think George Washington was correct, that we should avoid entangling alliances.