President Clinton's Military

[BOSSHOG]

Lets take a stroll down memory lane and see what our Military was doing in the middle east in the 90's when a radical liberal was in the WH. The U.S. in cooperation with Britan, France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia established Operations Southern and Northern Watch and maintained a no-fly zone over Iraq to keep Hussein "in a box." On the ground in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors were doing their job by getting rid of Hussein's weapons. I can't speak for the fiduciary agreement of Northern Watch, but per Southern Watch, the Saudi Government provided all the jet fuel used by American, British and French Jets and provided free housing and food for all the joint forces. Through this spirit of cooperation Hussein was neutered. Meanwhile, the federal government ran up a surplus and the religiously insane were not threatening to kill federal judges. And just how did the chickenshit chickenhawks of the GOP show their appreciation? As good DUers, you know the answer to that ??

[Kolesar]

1. My impression was that our containment of Iraq was unsustainable

Old Bush ended the 1991 war thinking that he could put sanctions on Saddam Hussein and the people would soon rebel and take over Iraq. The "sanctions" dragged on for a long period and turned out to be not only ineffectual, but gave Hussein an opportunity to control food distribution and further control the population.

I don't know what President Clinton could have done differently, considering that the Pentagon and the Republicans left us in position with no good options.

P.S. Colin Powell was no genius.

[MemphisTiger]

2. The sanctions seemed to work on Lybia