We knew back in '91 that Soddom was a scumbagg, but he was the lesser of evils, or so we thought. The overriding fear of the time was that if we eliminated him and his Bath party lost power the new rulers would be Muslim fundamentalist like in Iran. It was a case of "the devil you know vs. the devil you don't." We should have an easier time dealing with one man than with a collection of ruling Mullahs.

I recall a lecture at Yale about middle east politics back in late '91. One of the fears many folks had, including this lecturer was of a united Iran/Iraq under the flag of Fundamentalist Islam. This possibility was a worst case scenario and probably contributed to our inaction against SH. So now we have to deal with this sh!tbag today instead of 12 years ago. In retrospect it would have been better to whack him then. Schwarzkopf and Powell wanted to buy they were reined in and told "mission accomplished."