Saddam promised "the mother of all battles." What he got was the battle of all mothers.

At first, it felt like a model war--World War II all over again. When Desert Storm began, there was an intoxicating sense of collective unity, as Americans rallied around the flag, the president, and the military. The U.S. media tumbled, jumped, and cheered. Lee Greenwood's song "God Bless the USA," originally released in 1984, was dusted off, and became the theme tune of the war. Meanwhile, the yellow ribbon symbolized grassroots participation in the struggle.

Bush's approval ratings jumped 18 points to 82 percent. Impressively, after taking the nation into war, there was a 27-point surge in Bush's score for "making progress" at "keeping the nation out of war."

But while the U.S. victory was impressive, it was not total like in World War II. Bush called a halt to the fighting after freeing Kuwait, leaving Saddam Hussein in power.

It was the right decision. Escalating the war by marching on Baghdad would have destroyed the allied coalition. It would also have been illegal. The United Nations mandate only covered the liberation of Kuwait, not overthrowing the Iraqi dictator. And regime change would have left the United States in charge of creating a new government in post-war Iraq--a task for which it was not in the least bit prepared. As Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney remarked in 1992:

And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is, not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.

But Americans had other ideas. During the war, well over 70 percent of the public favored a march on Baghdad. Even when pollsters reminded people that the United Nations had only authorized a war to free Kuwait, a majority of Americans wanted to fight for regime change anyway. And strikingly, most of these hawks were willing to sacrifice thousands of extra U.S. lives to remove Saddam.

In American eyes, the war was morally black and white--necessitating total victory. After all, Bush described the conflict as: "good versus evil, right versus wrong, human dignity and freedom versus tyranny and oppression."

Americans were determined to punish Saddam. He was a picture-perfect villain, who invaded a weaker neighbor, took Americans hostage, fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia, and burned oil fields. In a January 1991 poll of West Virginians, Adolf Hitler only narrowly defeated Saddam Hussein for the title of most evil leader of the twentieth century (43 percent to 36 percent).

"People in Nebraska want this guy dead," reported Senator Bob Kerrey about opinion in his home state.