George H.W. Bush: “Well, may I remind you a little history. The policy was not to get him out of office; the policy was to get him out of…”

“Well, may I remind you a little history. The policy was not to get him out of office; the policy was to get him out of Kuwait. International statements by the United Nations in concert said, this aggression won't stand. The original call for sanctions by those who opposed my policy right up to the very end was, ``Sanctions will get him out of Kuwait; sanctions will reverse the aggression.'' It was very clear to me that it wouldn't. And so, out he went from Kuwait--which would have, under the policy of everybody, achieved all the objectives. It achieved ours. Then along comes the Kurd problem and the Shiite problem. And my view is, we will not have normalized relations with Saddam Hussein as long as he's behaving this way. But get it in focus. Don't change the goalposts, I tell my critics. The goalposts were, aggression will not stand. And aggression didn't stand. And it was an enormous victory that was properly celebrated here and all around the world. Now, am I happy that Saddam Hussein is there? Absolutely not. Will we lighten up on international sanctions as long as he's there? No. But I must clarify, because the way your question came at me made me think of some of the political critics who were saying we didn't succeed. We did succeed. And our objective was never to throw him out of office. Look at all the U.N. resolutions. So, I'm still hopeful that, recognizing the economy in that country is very sorry, that the Iraqi people will do what they should have done long ago, in my view. This man is unforgivably brutal. What he's done to the environment, what he did to the people of Kuwait, what he's doing to his own people is unconscionable. But it was not an objective of the United Nations resolutions or the U.S. policy to throw him out of office. The objective was to throw him out of Kuwait, and boy, did our people perform well.”