Creepily Prescient

Air date: February 4, 1997

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJuMX1GzD6I&NR

Transcript (found here)

Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: On the question of going to Baghdad - if you remember the Vietnam war, we had no international legitimacy for what we did. As a result, we, first of all, lost the battle in world public opinion. Eventually, we lost the battle at home.

In the Gulf war, we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions, every one of which said, "Kick Iraq out of Kuwait." Did not say one word about going into Iraq, taking Baghdad, conquering the whole country and- and hanging Saddam Hussein. That's point number one.

Point number two- had we gone on to Baghdad, I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone. The coalition would have ruptured and the only people that would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

And, oh, by the way, I think we'd still be there. We'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit. We could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying power and we'd be paying 100 percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.

ROBERT GATES, Deputy National Security Advisor: And that was the quagmire. Therein laid Vietnam, as far as we were concerned, because we would still be there. And what's more, given the American way of doing things, we would have then had the responsibility for rebuilding all of the infrastructure and we were just determined not to get sucked into that trap.

I remember watching this when it first aired. I was a sophomore in high school, visiting family in Minnesota. Fascinating.