Gaze into my crystal ball: I randomly came across this article from CNN from the Fall, 2002. It discussed what we should do with Iraq. Pretty good stuff.

You have George Bush, pere, defending why he didn't kick out Saddam in Gulf War I - we would have made a "martyr" of him. Hmmm, I guess not. Okay, maybe things were different back then and Saddam was more loved. If that's the case, then why this:

"After the Gulf War, I went around and talked to a number of very senior Bush administration officials, some of whom are in the new Bush administration, and they all assured me Saddam Hussein would fall in six months, because that was the basic take in the American intelligence community," said New York Times military affairs reporter Michael Gordon.

Then you flash forward to 2002, and look to see whether we should unilaterally, preemptively, remove Saddam. You had people like Dick Armey and Brent Scowcroft quite strongly saying we shouldn't take him out. Says the Scowster:

"An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken,"

Then there's Lawrence Eagleburger, he of Bush I administration:

"How long do we stay? How much does it cost? What does it do to our conditions within that part of the world? What kind of a regime do we put in his place? How long does it last if it seems that we are the ones that put him in his place?" Eagleburger said during a September 25 interview on CNN's "Late Edition." "I think there are any number of complex questions that simply haven't been examined."

Good questions Larry.