In doing research for today’s post on the execution of Saddam Hussein I came across this Time magazine cover from 1990.  I guess Time has their answer, albeit sixteen years later and from a different Bush.

Here are some excerpts from the article about Saddam and America circa 1990.

“Like Galtieri, Saddam seems to think we are too soft to fight unless he invades Saudi Arabia. He figures we’ll eventually tire of sitting in the desert and his occupation of Kuwait will become just another of the world’s sore spots that remain unresolved for decades. He’s wrong — but fewer and fewer of us believe he will learn that lesson short of war.”

The President has danced around this objective for weeks, but the evidence grows that merely restoring the status quo ante will not yield “security and stability” in the gulf, one of Bush’s publicly stated goals. As he told Congress last week, America wants “to curb the proliferation of chemical, biological, ballistic-missile and, above all, nuclear technologies.”

The fact is that if we are serious about going beyond getting Saddam out of Kuwait, and we are damn serious about it, then war is just about inevitable.”

“We’ve been bedeviled by the pretext thing for weeks, but we were greatly heartened by the Iraqi raid of foreign embassies” in Kuwait last Friday. “That kind of stupidity shows that Saddam is capable of providing a provocation at any time, even though everyone has assumed he is too smart for that.”

Remember all of that was said back in 1990 during the administration of Bush, Sr. and continued through the presidency of Bill Clinton.  Saddam’s biggest downfall was that he was cocky and truly felt the U.S. was soft and would never do anything about him and his evil.  Perhaps the ‘Butcher of Baghdad’ is enjoying his 41 virgins right about now, but I have a feeling his scorching is just beginning.

Read about Saddam’s execution and death.