This excerpt was sent to me from George H. W. Bush's Presidential Library.
You can easily verify it there.
This quote is from George H. W. Bush's Memiors
"Trying
to eliminate
Saddam, extending the ground war into occupation of Iraq, would have
violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream,
engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human
and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We
had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We
would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The
coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in
anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances,
there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of
our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set
a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going 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. It would have been a dramatically
different-- and perhaps barren--outcome."
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