Some stock purchases

Usage examples of options.

Other administration officials would assure the press that we have not yet made a decision to invade and that the buildup of forces is intended to give the president a range of options, from coercing Saddam to comply with a new containment regime up to and including an invasion if that became necessary.

Only when all other options have been clearly exhausted and when Saddam has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is tougher than anyone else, will he risk making concessions.

It usually sets me off rehearsing in my mind all of the arguments for and against all of the other options in one last effort to devise some alternative to the costs of an invasion.

He would assure the American people that while he has not made a decision to invade, he wants to have all options available.

Although the alternatives are considerably more costly, deterrence is the riskiest of all the policy options available to the United States.

Chapter 11: The Case for an Invasion It is the inadequacy of all the other options toward Iraq that leads us to the last resort of a full-scale invasion.

In the case of Iraq, we need to recognize that we have run out of alternatives and our options truly have come down to a dangerous deterrence or a potentially costly invasion.

I wrote this book to try to help those trying to understand the problems we face with Iraq and the options available to the United States.

The combination of popular willingness both to use force against Iraq and to make sacrifices to safeguard the nation open up the possibility of new policy options toward Iraq--policy options previously considered unfeasible because of an assumed absence of public support.

At the very least, we should look hard at deterrence and the other policy options, decide what is best for this country, and pursue that policy with conviction.

Bruce Riedel and I had our marching orders to develop realistic options for regime change, and we had every intention of doing so.

I began meeting with my counterparts throughout the government to get a better sense of what options and new ideas might be out there.

The impact of the Kosovo experience was brought home later that year, when we began to roll out the regime change options on Iraq that the Principals had requested.

Almost immediately, however, many senior administration officials began to express unease with the more aggressive options, if not the entire concept.

One of the last memos I wrote for the Clinton team described the policy options on Iraq that would be available to the next administration.