“The March 2, 1998 issue of Time ran a piece by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft titled, “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam.” Here’s an excerpt from the article:

We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.

“Recently, the piece became unavailable on Time’s archive page. No explanation why. But Bruce Koball scanned the microfilm from his library’s archives and posted a jpg of the article on his site. Why did Time take it off? (I’m calling to find out.)”

Full text here, from Boing Boing via Die Puny Humans.