“George HW Bush in 1991”
There is wisdom in your opinion. We all remember befuddlement when Bush and his advisors pulled out without finishing the job . It was irony to hear in 2001 , ten years after “Desert Storm”, that there were “ WMD” and bad things going on in Iraq. If that had been the case — why do we bring it up 10 years after we had an army there. ? Iraq had nothing to do with 911. In deed, Sadam had destroyed the WMD after 1991. We were imposing a “no fly” zone over Iraq that was never sanctioned by the UN (Look it up)and was called “illegal” by the General Secretary.
I guess what you are saying is that we would have saved $3 trillion dollars and thousands of dead and wounded if bush one has finished it. I agree.
That was the doings of Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military. Later, with George W. Bush, it was again Colin Powell, this time as Secretary of State, who lost Turkey as a key staging base to the north of Iraq just weeks before the beginning of military operations. This caused a last-minute redeployment of assets to the south to Basra, opening up the north for Saddam to flee and transport his WMD to Syria.
If Colin Powell hadn't blown it in Turkey, Iraq's forces would have been trapped between a northern and southern front, and hostilities would not have dragged on as they did.
-PJ
You are forgetting that the purpose in 1991 was to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait which they had achieved and we were asked by Kuwait to do so.