Actually, I think all of this - the second Iraq war and the ensuing deaths of thousands of Americans - can be laid at the feet of George Herbert Walker Bush.
In Desert Storm, this country and the coalition he assembled utterly routed the Iraqis from Kuwait (later, deeply into IRAQ - to the outskirts of Baghdad, even.)
Accounts of the two (or three?) F15s that massacred an entire column of fleeing Iraqis (booty and plunderings accompanying) are legendary.
Bush (1) had the power to apprehend and contain Iraq’s Hussein in his hands. Instead, he listened to a lilly-livered RINO Secretary of State (Powell) who was just in the beginnings of his own insurgency toward this government masquerading as concern for the optics of the “Highway of Death”, and Bush (1) stopped dead cold short of the prize that could have saved several thousand soldiers’ lives a decade later.
Exactly. You attack a country, but leave the leader in power, he will try to eventually exact revenge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhCRSs1tWo8
The crew of this AC-130A Spectre gunship, named Azrael (Azrael, in the Koran, is the angel of death who severs the soul from the body) displayed courage and heroism during the closing hours of Operation Desert Storm. On Feb. 26, 1991, Coalition ground forces were driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Azrael was sent to the Al Jahra highway between Kuwait City and Basrah, Iraq, to intercept the convoys of tanks, trucks, buses and cars fleeing the battle. Facing numerous enemy batteries of SA-6 and SA-8 surface-to-air missiles, and 37mm and 57mm radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery, the crew attacked the enemy skillfully, inflicting significant damage on the convoys. The crew's heroic efforts left much of the enemy's equipment destroyed or unserviceable, contributing to the defeat of the Iraqi forces. On Feb. 28, 1991, Iraq agreed to a cease-fire. The aircraft on display was assigned to the 919th Special Operations Wing and was retired to the museum in October 1995.
as a task force participant I recall the reports of revulsion even US military commander felt at continuing to massacre literally thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops and the reluctance of our Coalition, which included arabs and muslims among others, who were ready to bail on supporting the US in further ops and in postwar reconstruction if we continued shooting fish in a barrel
So yeah, maybe we needed a “Patton” and all we had was an “Eisenhower” who recommended for political as well as human reason to call off the slaughter and cave to the allies
but it was what the President SecDef and JCS had to work with and base decisions on at the time
when Saddam used his helicopters to massacre the marsh arabs and shia it was clear we’d been had, but it was too late
I think the idea was to have boots on the ground on both sides of Iran. Theoretically I can understand why somebody thought that was a good idea. In hind sight, I don’t think it worked out so well.
You forget the UN mandate was to get Iraq out of Kuwait and nothing more. The 140 country coalition would have crumbled if we went any further.
Hindsight may say it was a mistake but at the time we didn’t have support for anything else.