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What Really Happened in the Gulf War What Really Happened in Gulf War Continued on from Page 15 In the White House, Scowcroft told the president to stand down. "Geopolitics," he said, dictated that Washington let Saddam crush the Shiite revolt. It was not in America's interest for Iraq "to fall apart." Iran would be the prime beneficiary of such a development. Scowcroft and his chief Middle East expert, Richard Haass, had reminded Bush throughout the war that regime change in Iraq must not be an American aim because a vacuum in Iraq would destroy the regional balance of power as well as Bush's coalition. "Mr. President," Haass told Bush, "I know what you want; I just don't see how it's going to happen." Powell warned of mission creep and recommended again that the U.S. get out quickly and cleanly. Powell quarreled with Wolfowitz and told him to stop acting as if the question of aiding the Shiites was still open. would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit asked him to do so." Seizing on that appearance Wolfowitz grumbled that Powell and - we would still be there." With what sounds of presidential weakness, Bill Clinton Schwarzkopf were seeking "rapid like black humor today, Schwarzkopf also noted campaigned that year against President Bush -- disengagement to preserve the luster of victory." the prohibitive cost of such a venture, "of and beat him -- chiding Bush for not putting Indeed the ruthless determination with which occupying Iraqi territory and maintaining or Saddam and his acolytes on trial for war crimes. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the neo-cons restoring government, education, and other Clinton would prove no more effective than would construct the Iraq War twelve years later services for the people of Iraq." Surely, Bush in removing Saddam. Perhaps Colin derived from their conviction that great Schwarzkopf concluded, "this is a burden the Powell said it best, in his post-war memoirs, opportunities to reinvent Iraq had been beleaguered American taxpayer would not have when he compared the pressures weighing on squandered at Safwan. "The military's attitude been happy to take on." Secretary of Defense Bush's war termination with the pressures was we have won," Wolfowitz bitterly recalled. Cheney, who would become the sharpest weighing on Meade after Gettysburg, or on "Let's cut this cleanly and not let the civilians exponent of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Eisenhower in 1945 as the Russians raced for load us with a lot of missions. Safwan was too also argued against a push to Baghdad in 1991. Berlin. It was easy to say that the generals hasty and too dignified." "Saddam," Cheney said, "is just one more should have done more, but at what cost, in In May 1991, Bush acknowledged that irritant, but there's a long list of irritants in that lives, treasure and opportunity? That lingering the victory in Kuwait had been anything but part of the world." question, which appeared hypothetical when decisive when he extended the pre-war Cheney was right. Even a hardliner like Powell wrote his memoirs, would shortly be economic sanctions against Iraq "until Saddam Margaret Thatcher worried about "getting an answered by President Bush's son.[] Hussein is out of power." The D.I.A. confirmed arm caught in the mangle." Summing up the that Saddam's nuclear weapons program "had White House discussions on war termination, ABOUT THE AUTHOR: been slowed but not halted" by Desert Storm. Rick Atkinson found that "Bush and his men After the war, Saddam employed 2,000 foreign- concluded that the excessive price of total trained scientists and 18,000 engineers, proof victory would be indefinite responsibility for Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is the that Saddam was sparing no expense to join the rebuilding a hostile nation with no tradition of General Olinto Mark Barsanti nuclear club. If sanctions and U.N. inspections democracy but with immensely complex Professor of Military History and ever ceased, Saddam would have a bomb "in internal politics." Their probity would be Director of the Military History two to four years." Bush and Scowcroft later confirmed in the years after 2003. Still, the Center at the University of North explained their decision not to intervene in Persian Gulf War left a bad taste in everyone's Texas. He is the author of Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Iraq's internal affairs or press on to Baghdad to mouth. Because of his vacillation at Safwan, overthrow Saddam in their joint memoir - A Bush now found himself precisely where he Power in the Middle East (Penguin Press, World Transformed. Bush noted that the war's didn't want to be -- "bogged down in a civil 2010.) object was simple: to eject the Iraqis from war." The suffering of Iraq's Kurds and Shiites Kuwait, restore Kuwait's independence, and was so visible that Bush belatedly rethought his degrade the Iraqi military. "To occupy Iraq war aims. In April 1991, he abruptly decided would instantly shatter our coalition, turn the that "Saddam is discredited and cannot be whole Arab world against us, and make a redeemed." Having earlier resolved to leave broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero." Bush Saddam in power to ensure a balance of power, accurately predicted the fate of his less Bush now vowed to remove him from power, a reflective son: "To march into Baghdad ... task that would have been easier just a month or would condemn young soldiers to fight in what two earlier when there were a half million U.S. would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war. It troops in country. Bush resorted to half- could only plunge that part of the world into measures: economic sanctions, no-fly zones, even greater instability and destroy the and a big, apparently permanent U.S. military credibility we were working so hard to presence in the region that would embarrass the establish." Secretary of State Baker concurred, House of Saud and inflame radicals like Osama arguing that a drive to Baghdad would have bin Laden. transformed a war to rescue Kuwait into "a U.S. A year after the war, Saddam mocked war of conquest" that would have snared the President Bush from Baghdad and claimed Army in "urban warfare and military victory: "It was George Bush with his own will occupation." Schwarzkopf too was prescient: "I who decided to stop the fighting. Nobody had am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we