Head of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and former National Security Advisor to George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, wrote an article in The Washington Post on October 16, 2001. “Harking back to the Gulf War of 1991, he asserted that if the United States had gone on to Baghdad [Iraq], ‘Our Arab allies…would have deserted us, creating an atmosphere of hostility to the United States…[that] might well have spawned scores of Osama bin Ladens. …[W]e already hear voices declaring that the United States is too focused on a multilateral approach. The United States knows what needs to be done, these voices say, and we should just go ahead and do it. Coalition partners just tie our hands. …’ For the war on terror to be successful, he concluded, it would have to be ‘even more dependent on coalition-building than was the Gulf War.’ ”
– Craig Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush, Page 228