This aggression will not stand. With these words, George Bush committed the United States to the liberation of the oil-rich Kingdom of Kuwait, after it had been occupied by the Republic of Iraq in August of 1990.
George H. W. BushGoing in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.
George H. W. Bush