\'The idea of direct invasion is the greatest threat to Saddam. It avoids the problems of securing local allies, inside and outside Iraq, which bedevil any indirect approach to get rid of him. But it has one immense disadvantage from the US point of view ...if the US invades Iraq to install its own government it will be taking direct physical control of an area containing more than half the world\'s oil reserves. It will look like the founding of a new American empire based on physical force and will be deeply resented. It would exchange one set of problems--dealing with a fractious Iraqi opposition--with another: International anger over a US take-over of one of the most important of the oil states. It would outrage the Arabs at a moment when the Israel-Palestine conflict is in a particularly bloody phase. America could find that it has overplayed its hand, just as Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait twelve years ago.\' - From the new Prologue