It's why Russia stood alone as pretty much the only nation aside from a few other tinpot Arabs to oppose the original Gulf War and were still trying to broker a "pull out schedule" for Iraq to leave Kuwait over the next 5 years or so and paint GHWB as an unhinged war-monger who didn't want peace when it was clear everyone except the Russkies, Hollywood and The Ayatollah were saying "Go right ahead, we got our popcorn ready" .... because of the slim chance it might have worked and made the US look bad, but it didn't, and that war ended so quickly (forget fish in a barrel, that was a 12ga shotgun in a goldfish bowl) that nobody had time to even plot the "how to we make it look like another Vietnam?" stage.