Let us scroll back a decade to the post-mortems which followed the liberation of Kuwait. Try to guess who said this –"The Gulf War was a limited-objective war. If it had not been, we would be ruling Baghdad today – an unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships."? The same person went on to deliver the following insights into America's attitude to Iraq –"There are those who have asked why President Bush did not order our forces on to Baghdad after we had driven the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. We must assume that the political objective of such an order would have been capturing Saddam Hussein. Even if Hussein had waited for us to enter Baghdad and even if we had been able to capture him, what purpose would it have served and would serving that purpose have been worth the many more casualties that would have occurred? Would it have been worth the inevitable follow-up: major occupation forces in Iraq for years to come and a very expensive and complex American proconsulship in Baghdad? Fortunately for America, reasonable people at the time thought that and still do." That was Colin Powell.