Allied leaders revisit Gulf War

Former President Bush, right, and retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf recount their experiences of the Gulf War

In this story: Major: Going to Baghdad wasn't mandate Schwarzkopf: Couldn't be done today George Bush: Getting Iraq to comply still issue RELATED STORIES, SITES

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (CNN) -- Former British Prime Minister John Major said he joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991 because he had "not a shred of doubt" that Iraqi forces would have headed toward Saudi Arabia if Saddam Hussein were not checked.

Major also defended the decision by former U.S. President George Bush not to overthrow Hussein by sending troops into Baghdad.

"The annexation of Kuwait would have been the first of others," Major told students Friday at a reunion at Texas A&M University marking the 10th anniversary of the conflict that routed Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

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If Iraqi forces had invaded other countries, military and political chaos would have spread through the Middle East and economic chaos would have reverberated across the world, he said.

Major: Going to Baghdad wasn't mandate

Major dismissed criticism that coalition forces should have continued to Baghdad, and toppled Hussein.

"Our mandate from the United Nations was to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait, not to bring down the Iraqi regime," he said. It was the U.N. resolutions that led to the cohesiveness of the coalition, he said. Breaking them would have had dire consequences, he said.

"Across parts of the Middle East, there was always a subliminal suspicion that some members of the coalition, the United States, the United Kingdom in particular, may have had a further agenda of the dismemberment of Iraq," Major said. "If we had gone further, I dare say, the conspiracy theorists would have pointed that out very strongly."

And the prospect of further carnage was not appealing, he said -- facing the coalition troops were relatively untried youngsters.

"A turkey shoot is not what professional armies much like," he said.

"We had gone to war to uphold international law. To go further than our mandate would have been, arguably, to break international law," Major said. "We might have won the military engagement but lost the support of the world."

Had coalition forces entered Baghdad, U.S. credibility would have been shot, he said.

"What would have happened next time?" he asked. "Would Arab states have joined in such a coalition if they'd seen us go further than anyone expected? I very much doubt it."

And overthrowing Hussein would have led to other problems, including deciding how to replace him, Major said. A puppet government would have been not only difficult to defend internationally, but could have mired forces in Iraq for decades, he said, noting that British troops entered Cyprus "temporarily" more than 30 years ago. "They're still there."

Schwarzkopf: Couldn't be done today

U.S. forces would be incapable of doing today what they did 10 years ago, said former Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the allied forces during the war, in response to a question.

"And I think that that's why the president of the United States has pledged that he is going to do something with the military of the United States of America," Schwarzkopf said.

George Bush: Getting Iraq to comply still issue

Asked about the viability of continued support from coalition countries for economic sanctions against Iraq, former President Bush responded with caution.

"I'm very careful these days about answering political questions, for obvious reasons. I don't want to get number 43 mad at me." said the nation's 41st president; his son is the 43rd.

Still, the former president ventured, "I think you can be assured there's a lot of work going on to find out if there's a better way to compel Saddam Hussein to comply with international law."

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United Nations
  • Office of the Iraq Programme
The Iraqi Presidency
Iraq energy profile, U.S. Dept. of Energy

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