A TIME magazine article of March 2, 1998 called "Selling the War Badly," about President Clinton's air strikes against Iraq, contained a sidebar by George Bush Sr. - an excerpt from his book "A World Transformed" laying out reasons why Bush Sr. decided not to send forces to Baghdad in his 1991 Gulf War:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. ... 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. Had we gone the invasion route, the US could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

(This TIME magazine article remained on TIME's web site until spring 2003.)

Oblivia Offenfaulty reporting for Grandma Minutia