How many people wish that Bush Sr. nailed Suddam when he invaded Kuwait?

Question

I heard from a buddy who has a buddy in the Navy that they had many chances to take out Saddam when he invaded Kuwait. I wonder if they would have done it then would we be there today? I don't think so but what do you think?

wow 6 stars ! I've never came close to that before. Very educational answers thanks all....good night

Answer 1

No, we wouldn't be where we are today..if Clinton would have reacted accurately to the first bombings of the world trade center during his terms...those too were done by Osama Bin Ladin, but yet they seem to be forgotten. Had Clinton been a better president then Bush wouldn't have had to make the hard decisions that he has had to made...but just like Vietnam, Clinton ran from confrontation. Clinton had many many chances to get things straight and take care of business before Bush got in office, yet he decided to leave that for Bush. Yet, I am sure later on that Clinton will be looked at as though he was "great president" for many years to come, only because he was really good at running from tough decisions!

Answer 2

Hmm..good question. But not as simple as it sounds.
The main problem was the fact that if Saddam was removed right then, during that chaos, the US would have to replace Saddam with a leader; someone the people would agree with and that could take charge of the nation. We did not want to be responsible for that. Thats part of the problem we're going through right now. We're stuck. So, maybe things would have been just the same only that the results were delayed. But most likely, if things would have been thought out better, maybe lives would have been saved.
We love to intervene and be the world's 'watchdog'....but we dont like to stay around and clean up the mess.

Answer 3

A Star ( * ) from me for this excellent question

(((( When ever I star someone and say I did -- it seems like they get a lot more stars - why is that ??? )))))

Probably because I am a leader type personality and others are follwers


I think we would be there but we would not be dealing with the radical element we have today in 1990 - 1991 Al Queda Did NOT exist in its 2007 form and strength.

I still think when ever we find an enclave of these Fanatic Bast**** we should send in small Nuke and Say "Hey It must have been another of their suitcase bombs that was set off by them by mistake == That would cut back on some of their activity I am sure

Are you monitoring this Yahoo Answers Thing -- Joint Chiefs ???? I bet you are -- Big Brother Lives

Answer 4

yes, I wish he had, just gotten him, I even did then and I was 13 years old. There must have been reasons for sparing Saddam and from what I read above there were. I also wish President Clinton would have gotten Bin Laden as well, that would have saved alot of problems too.

Answer 5

Many people do. The Problem was, Bush could not have gotten the coalition he did, if he had done that. He promised to Free Kuwait and that's exactly what he did. If he has said free Kuwait and invade Iraq. No one would have joined him. He did what any honorable man would have. he stuck to his word. I wonder if The Democrats win the election and surrender Iraq, Then the terrorists take the country and kill hundreds of thousands of people who supported the new Government. Will people be asking questions here like "How many people wish that Bush Jr stayed the course when he invaded Iraq?"

Answer 6

Bush did not invade Iraq. The U.S. invaded Iraq. If you don't see the difference you need more 9th grade schooling. Both invasions were to the benefit of us and we should have done as you advocate and left Saddam Hussein alone. He would have conquered the middle east except for Israel and then we could have dealt with just him as we saw fit. Instead we tried to right his wrong.

Answer 7

LOL yeah, we could have toppled him with ease, but then explaining why all those weapons had USA painted on the side would have been chaos. Had to give him a chance to destroy them.

Saddam was taken out for one simple fact, he served his purpose of keeping Iran on their side of the border, and became the weakest link, after he decided to invade Kuwait.
He was like the pitbull watchdog that got off his chain, and mauled someone. He had to be put down. And like any good dog owner, you put your own dog down, rather than having someone else do it, like Iran. Iran would have been more than happy to do so, and help them form an Islamic theocracy on top of all that oil. Pushing Iran out of Kuwait after that would have been much more of a problem, just like pushing them out of Iraq would be if they took him out.

People around here obviously don't research much about the situation, or they would realize, that Iran was complaining about Saddam using the chemical supplied to him as "dual purpose" farm chemicals, as chemical weapons for years. Reagan's State department even signed the authorization of B. anthracis to be sent from a culture collection in Illinois to Baghdad.
During the Bush sr. watch, the CIA was trying to locate a huge stockpile of RPGs in the area, and buy them back. yup i said "buy them back". These things were turning up in the hands of guerilla fighters, and it appears it was a big nuisance for the CIA. especially since they spent millions to get them out of the hands of Al Queda, and the taliban. It is quite unclear how they got into their hands, but it definitely would not have been good if certain folks, started firing them into Isreal, at coalition troops, or our own.
Even now certain American weapons are reportedly turning up in the hands of militants, attacking coalition troops. Its hard to really say, how they got there, but when you are supporting a dictator for a couple decades, it isn't hard to guess.

Answer 8

Schwartzkopf wanted to 'keep going until he hit Turkey', but we pulled back the reigns. The little talked about reason is that in order to secure UN backing and a Coalition of nearly 70 nations we promised NOT to take Saddam out, but just to kick his armies out of Kuwait and keep them on the run until they surrendered. Looking back, it might have saved us nearly 2 decades of trouble though.

Answer 9

I think we would have had the justification, the backing and the appreciation of most of the world at that time. Saddam had committed most of his crimes by that time, we could have put an end to what took place after that and saved a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. Talk about missed chances.

Answer 10

Your friend is right. I was in Kuwait and Saddam was put on a "do not engage" list. No one ever knew why... On an interesting side note, Clinton put Osama on a do not engage list at one point as well.