"After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad," Bush said in September, revealing, beyond his official goal of disarming Iraq by force to protect the United States from fresh terrorist attacks, a personal hatred of the Iraqi leader.

The comment referred to the discovery and disruption of a car-bomb plot to kill former president George Bush as he traveled to Kuwait in April 1993.

Bush senior's March 1991 Gulf War victory and his son's emerging victory in Iraq bear little resemblance.

The former president successfully chased Iraqi troops from Kuwait, which Saddam had invaded, at the head of a coalition formed by the major international powers, and backed by a UN mandate.

No such UN support exists for the current president, who ordered US troops to the Gulf and Iraqi territory without a UN mandate, but with backing from Britain and Australia.

"There was clarity in 1991," commented Lance Morrow, professor of presidential history at the University of Boston. "Today, the situation is much less clear; anything could happen."

In Iraq, the situation is currently still chaotic in the wake of the collapse of power in Baghdad. A US-led interim administration is waiting in the wings to take over following Saddam's departure.

And while in 1991, the UN mandate was to liberate Kuwait after Iraq's 1990 invasion, without seeking a regime change in Baghdad, in 2003, Bush clearly stated that his goal was to see a democratically elected government in power in Iraq following a US-British administered transition period.

The current president has no qualms in expressing his regrets publicly that Saddam remained in power after the events of 1991.

"There are people in the south of Iraq that had been betrayed, tortured; had been told they were going to be free, took a risk in the past and then were absolutely hammered by the Iraqi regime," Bush said at an April 8 joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"They were skeptical, they were cynical, they were doubtful. Now they believe, they're beginning to understand we're real and true. And it's happening elsewhere. Freedom is spreading south to north," Bush said.

The senior Bush's administration has also said it regretted not having intervened in 1991 to aid the Shiites of southern Iraq who rose up against Saddam's regime after Iraq was beaten in the Gulf war.

While 12 years ago, former president Bush won respect for the way he handled the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his son is held in mistrust. George W. Bush "is absolutely hated abroad," Morrow said.

And in the United States, even if still popular, Bush is faring less well than his father did in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.

In a poll published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, President Bush's popularity 26 months into his 48-month mandate was at 66 percent, compared with the 81 percent his father was polling at the same juncture.

Bush senior went on to lose the 1992 presidential race to Bill Clinton.

According to a separate poll published Saturday in the Washington Post, only 51 percent of Americans want to see George W. Bush re-elected for a second term in November 2004.

But George W. Bush's victory in Baghdad -- compared to that of his father, forced to leave Saddam in power -- carries powerful symbols.

On Friday, two days after taking control of the Iraqi capital, US troops began to dismantle the mosaic of the senior Bush on the floor of Baghdad's best-known hotel, the Rashid.

The mosaic had been laid at the end of the Gulf War, to be trampled by all who walked through the Rashid's foyer.

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