re: The mother of all press conferences

quote:

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we shouldn't have stopped at the border back then, maybe we wouldn't have had to go back and start that crap all over again.

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While this is the truth, you have to look at it with the lens of the geo-political situation at the time. We had a VERY tenuous alliance with our Arab partners. The only way we got them to participate was to reiterate that we were not there for regime change we were there to liberate a sovereign country. Ironically, it was our presence in the region in the aftermath of the war that led to the establishment of Al Qaeda and the terror attack that led to the second gulf war.

At the time, we also had to work really hard to keep Israel from retaliating against Iraq after the scud missile attacks. Had Israel retaliated it would have destroyed to coalition and it would have been us, the Israelis, Brits and the French (NATO) vs the Arab countries in the region. It would have been a bloodbath for both sides.