Former President George Bush calls him the "most secure dictator in the world," his nemesis who did not surrender in the face of defeat and who continues today to taunt the world with doomsday weapons.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein turned a devastating military failure in the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War of 1991 into a political victory. He thumbed his nose at his vanquishers by skipping a cease-fire meeting in the desert, and he has been flouting its conditions ever since.That is the view of critics who have argued since the fighting stopped that America won the war but lost the battle by not getting rid of Saddam. Now, in light of the latest clash over Iraq's suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons production, questions are being raised anew about why the United States and its wartime coalition did not remove Saddam - dead or alive - when it had its best chance.
"After the licking that Iraq took, there was virtually a universal assumption that Saddam would fall. In retrospect that was naive," said Charles Freeman, who was U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time.
Freeman, like other critics in and out of the Bush administration, say the United States should have sought a complete surrender requiring Saddam to cede power and then supported opposition groups.
"The problem was we did not have a war-termination strategy of any kind and so the war never ended, no negotiations," Freeman said. "The United States and the coalition simply walked away with a cease-fire."
But Bush said he did not want America to become an occupying force, openly backing Iraqi opposition groups at the cost of support from Arab nations that had been part of the coalition against Iraqi aggression.
Fearing a Vietnam-like quagmire, Bush did not want to dedicate tens of thousands of troops to a manhunt for the elusive Saddam in Iraq, which could have lasted months, if not longer, and cost American lives.
President Clinton faces the same dilemma today even as members of Congress and others suggest the United States target Saddam's regime.
Finally, the Bush administration said the U.N. resolution authorizing the war mandated only the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi invaders.