Desire4Bono,
First let me correct some distortions about the first Gulf War. There was never any mass surrender of the Republican Guard forces. The Republican Guard had 8 divisions at the time of the Gulf War.(The Regular Army had a little over 50) These were:
1. Hammurabi Armored Division
2. al-Faw Infantry Division
3. Madinah Munawrah Armored Division
4. Tawakalnah Armored Division
5. Nebuchadnezzar Armored Division
6. Adnan Armored Division
7. Special Forces Division
8. Baghdad Infantry Division
During the ground war US ground forces destroyed the Tawakalnah Armored Division, Nebuchadnezzar Armored Division, Adnan Armored Division and 50% of the Madinah Munawrah Armored Division. In each case, the soldiers of each Division numbering over 10,000 a piece fought to the death! Few if any prisoners were taken from these divisions. Only four prisoners and perhaps the only 4 survivers were taken in from the Tawakalnah Division. The Madinah Division only survived because of the suspension of offensive ground operations after 100 hours.
The Baghdad Division had most of its troops defending the Capital and was not in the theater of operations, while the Special Forces Division quickly withdrew towards Baghdad at the start of the Ground War. The Hammurabi Armored Division and the al-faw Infantry Division survived relatively intact and were ready to defend Al-Basrah if the city was attacked.
The point here is that the Republican Guard did not surrender at all, and their level of resistance was surprising even if it was ultimately futile.
There were 80,000 Iraqi REGULAR ARMY soldiers that surrendard but that is out of a total of 350,000 Regular Army and Republican Guard forces still in the area of operations at the time of the Ground War. Most Iraqi soldiers did not surrender but either retreated, deserted, or were killed or wounded in combat.
The Bush administration realized that Saddam should go back in 1991 but did not compaign for an operation of regime removal because congress would have blocked it. Realize the US Senate only Authorized Desert Storm by a Narrow vote of 52 to 47. Had they tried to get an operation for regime change that was much more involved and included going all the way to Baghdad to remove the regime, it would have been easily defeated in the Senate and then nothing would have happened, and the Iraqi's would have remained in Kuwait.
So many people here forget that there was heavy opposition to the first Gulf War and its funny to see(not to point the finger at anyone) some political figures criticize the first Bush administration for not going all the way to Baghdad when they did not want to use force to even remove the Iraqi military from Kuwait.
The Coalition that George Bush Sr. built in 1990/1991 to help enforce sanctions and pay for most of the military effort would have collapsed if the USA suddenly decided to advance on Baghdad. But the thing is, even if the adminstration suddenly decided to go to Baghdad, it had not put in place the logistical needs for an operation all the way to Baghdad, which would be significantly more than an operation to free Kuwait, at the time of the ground war. Many felt that Saddam would not last in power and it was less costly to wait a couple of years for him to be overthrown than to invade and overthrow him and be saddled with rebuilding the country without the support of any coalition members. Based on the intelligence information available back then, Bush made an intelligent decision. The USA removed Iraq from Kuwait, destroyed much of its military power and enforced no-fly zones and an inspection regime on the country to destroy its WMD program. The USA did not have to pay a dime for the war, the Coalition allies, mainly Japan, Germany, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia paid the 70 Billion dollar tab. The price of oil around the world dropped to some of its lowest levels in history helping to fuel the economic expansion of the late 1990s. The only problem was, to shock of many, Saddam was not overthrown from within as the administration had caculated it would be.
Its easy to look back in hindsite and say the adminstration made a mistake. I agree in general that Saddam should have been overthrown by the Coalition in Allies in 1991. But this was not possible for several reasons. The Coalition Allies did not support such an action, and the US congress and public were not supportive of such an action either. President Bush did the best he could with these built in restraints. In fact its to President Bush's credit that he was able to convince the US Congress and the world of the need to remove Saddam Hussian from Kuwait with military force!
As far as what happened from 1991 to 2002, most of that of course falls on Clintons shoulders. Saddam for the most part complied with the resolutions against him in 1991 and 1992. The obstructions and bad behavior against the UN inspection teams occured more often in the mid to late 1990s. If the UN inspection teams could successfully and permanently disarm Iraq peacefully then the fact that Saddam was an evil dictator would not matter. He would simply be the defanged snake, evil but powerless. The approach was cerntainly less costly politically and economically to have a large inspection and containment regime. The problem is the inspections while successful in many cases were in the end a failure because they did not accomplish the goal of disarming Iraq completely and permanently. The inspectors were of course kicked out giving Saddam time to re-constitute his WMD programs and figure out a way to conceal them if the inspectors were ever let back into the country based on the previous experience.
The Clinton Administration felt UN inspections plus Containment would keep Saddam from having the capability to threaten his neighbors or the USA, and felt there was not much support for regime change in the region or in the USA itself. The UN inspectors were kicked out in 1998 and the Coalition in response bombed Iraq for four days which only temporarily set back Saddam for a year at most. By 2000, the election year, the Clinton Adminstration wanted to stay on the defensive and practice damage control with Iraq and let the new administration come in and get a fresh start instead of handing them a mess.
The Bush adminstration from the start stated that Saddam's violations would not stand and were looking at all options for regime change. A large scale conventional invasion was still seen as off the table because most did not believe they could muster enough support required in Congress and from the American People. But that changed on Sept. 11, 2001. People who had been passive on the threat from Iraq woke up to the reality of that threat and realized Iraq had to be disarmed now, with force if necessary, to prevent a disaster greater than 9/11 in the future.
It is interesting to note that Hitler was a threat in 1933, but the world sat and did nothing. It was difficult for those that thought something needed to be done to muster enough political support to do something. Eventually events around the world would change the majority opinion, but it was probably to late had it not been for German and Japanese military mistakes. Please, this is not a direct comparison to Saddam, but simply an illistration of the difficulties of responding to threats in a democracy and the problems that can emerge when you do not deal with threats when they first arise.
