In his 1998 book, A World Transformed, George H.W. Bush describes his reason for not going after Saddam at the end of the first Gulf war:"Extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq . . . would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad . . . [and] rule Iraq. . . . Under those circumstances there would have been no viable exit strategy . . . the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."