Back in 1994, Dick Cheney (who had been the Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush during the first Iraq war) explained that the Bush 41 administration did not invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power for the following reasons:
Invading Iraq would create a volatile quagmire. He was right. "ISIS" stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria".
Cheney's larger statement can be seen in this video:
"Once you got to Iraq and took it over--took down Saddam Hussein's government--then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim--fought over it for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. If the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire, if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."
Invading Iraq would create a volatile quagmire. He was right. "ISIS" stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria".
Cheney's larger statement can be seen in this video: