For all the bad press about his Presidency, General U.S. Grant was personally honest and a man of moral clarity in military matters. (His somewhat innocent belief in the honesty of the men who surrounded him was what gave his administration the black reputation it suffers.) Prior to the Mexican War, he wrote to the woman who would one day be his wife: “If we have to fight, I would like to do it all at once and then make friends.” Which sounds like what we have in mind for the Middle East; smack the crap out of them, take out their tinpot dictators and their theocratic oppressors, and then do a lot of democratic nation-building.
And he also had the right idea about how you fight the enemy. You fight the enemy totally, giving him no chance to mess you around, and when he cries “Uncle!” you make sure he means it:
Hd Qrs. Army in the Field Camp near Donelson, Feby 16th Gen. S.B. Buckner, Confed. Army, Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of Commissioners, to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works. I am Sir: very respectfully Your obt. sevt. U.S. Grant Brig. Gen.
That’s what “Stormin’ Norman” needed to tell Saddam in ’91, and it’s what Tommy Franks needs to tell Saddam now. And then execute. “Faster, please.”
Grant quote from Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville, p. 215; Grant’s message to General Buckner is from p. 212 of same. This is the message that earned him the moniker “Unconditional Surrender”.