[DoughtyOne]

But that fate would not have stopped on the Peninsula. It would have gobbled up Jordan, Egypt, Libya... down across Africa.

We’re talking about a massive occupation and swap-out of governments to become one massive nation.

During the process that effort would expend it’s energy to develop WMDs and seek more territory.

Why allow that to happen? It wouldn’t be good. It seems to me a stable region with governments in place is a much safer world.

[Cronos]

Cronos: We should have left the peninsular Arabs to their fate.

DoughtyOne: But that fate would not have stopped on the Peninsula. It would have gobbled up Jordan, Egypt, Libya... down across Africa.

Not really.

Remember that from 1980 to 1988 Saddam faced off against the Iranis. The Iranis were weakened from sanctions, from lower oil production, from culling of top military ranks. And the Iraqis were supported by Gulf money and American weaponry

But Saddam was still unable to win. After 8 years, the borders did not move an inch

While he could easily walk into Kuwait or Qatar,

1. if he stepped on Saudi land, he would have Pakistan coming to fight him along with Egypt and may be turkey
2. if he invaded Jordan, the Israelis would have stepped in to crush him (which they could do easily
3. if he invaded Turkey, he'd be crushed by a much more powerful military
4. if he invaded Syria, he'd get as far as the eastern suburbs of Damascus before the Israelis and Turks jointly crushed him

Egypt? -- ha, ha! They had a much stronger military than him
Libya? - Ghaddafi was mad and would have bled Saddam far -- Saddam's understanding of logistics was poor (the Iran iraq war and Gulf war one showed that)

• down across Africa -- he'd never make it into Chad, the desert there is worse than the empty quarter in Arabia. Maybe Somalia or Ethiopian lowlands, but the highlands no

  And we knew this in 1990. He was a tinpot dictator