Always

“Had we gone into Baghdad — We could have done it. You guys could have done it. You could have been there in 48 hours. And then what? Which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerilla war to find the most-secure dictator in the world? Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we’re going to show our macho? We’re going into Baghdad. We’re going to be an occupying power — America in an Arab land — with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous.”

– George H. W. Bush, Feb. 28, 1999, Fort Myer Army base. Quoted p. 11, “State of Denial,” by Bob Woodward.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs,”

“Furthermore, we had been self‑consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post‑Cold War world,” he continued. “Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

George H. W. Bush from his 1998 book, “A World Transformed”