[Skybird]

It raises my hair to start a big thing loike a hiuge war only to end it over such little "details", Steve. He enfoirced a no flky zoine over all of Iraq, btw, not just Kuwait, but let Saddam have his ginshiopos aginst whioch the uprising rebels were defenceless. Under his reign the CIA had motivated the rtebels to rise, and the goal was obviously to topple Saddam - or to help him making himself a safe seat by creating a trigger he could use to wipe out those thtreatenign his reign. No matter how I look at it, Steve: his Iraq poliucy doe snot look well.



Considering further what a PITA Saddam later turned into. One may argue that Bush could not have known the fiuture. But the taste of things to come he should have had, and his staff shouöld have been able top forsee.



Bush's approach on Saddam and Iraq was inconsequent. The son's was even worse, of course: it was naive.



The argument that he wanted to avoid US troops doing house fighting I do not see as valid. in 2003 we learned what house fighting in Iraq meant (not the kind of fight one feared), and in 1991 Arab members of the coalition aginst Saddam who had troops on the ground were eager to point out that it should not be the Americans being the first to enter Bagdad, but that it should be Arab troops, themselves: Arab pride and all that. Egypt it was I think who took the leading voice for this, or the Saudis? Probably not the Saudis, but Egypt indeed.



But however. Its 27 years. A German paper wrote today that Bush senior probably was the most well-prepared president reaching the WH in the 21st century. And I think that could be correct.