[1] They explained in 1998 why they failed to go to Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein's government from power in 1991 during the Gulf War:[2] While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state.

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.

Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world.

Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.

It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.This article about a biographical or autobiographical book on an American politician is a stub.