Countdown to Invasion

On July 21, 1990 the CIA reported that Iraq was massing troops near the Kuwaiti border, but most officials dismissed it as saber-rattling on the part of Saddam, designed to intimidate the Kuwaitis with whom he was having negotiations concerning his grievances. On July 24, State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler stated that the U.S. was committed to supporting the individual & collective self-defense of American friends in the Gulf, but that, we do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, & there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." Nevertheless, the U.S. chose to hold naval exercises with the United Arab Emirates.
Only 6 days before the invasion, the U.S. Senate voted against agricultural trade sanctions, aimed at curbing Baghdad. At that time, Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs John Kelly, lobbying against the sanctions, stated, it would be the American farmer & the American exporter who would be punished by sanctions. The administration remains opposed to broad-gauged sanctions." Senator Richard Lugar, another supporter of the Bush administration said, Sanctions would badly undercut any possibility we have of influencing Iraqi behavior."

Saddam Meets U.S. Ambassador Glaspie

On July 25th, when Saddam was already advanced in his plans to invade Kuwait, he had the now infamous meeting with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie. A transcript of the meeting released by Iraq & not disputed by the State Department until several months later, after the war, reveals that Saddam began by impressing upon Glaspie Iraq's needs & desires concerning his dispute with Kuwait, reminding her that the U.S. has been sympathetic to these complaints in the past. He also protested the naval exercises being held by the U.S. in the Gulf, & threatened to unleash terrorists on America. He further mentioned that he hoped that President Bush himself would read the account of this meeting. Knowing that all her comments would therefore be very much on the record", Glaspie's first reply was:
I clearly understand your message. We studied history at school. They taught us to say freedom or death. I think you know well that we as a people have our experience with the colonialists".
What she was in effect saying, was that she realized that a major problem in the Gulf was the fact that the borders were drawn to conform to a now-obsolete British colonial diagram, a reality that had been the essence of Iraq's grudge against Kuwait for decades. For Saddam Hussein, who has been agitating against the colonialists for most of his life, the American Ambassador's reference to Patrick Henry, one of the founding fathers of U.S. independence who said, Give me liberty, or give me death", in this context had to be more than he hoped for. Saddam further questioned her on the meaning of the statement made in Washington by State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler the day before. Glaspie reassured him:
We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue, & that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction."
From some other comments made during the meeting, Saddam could easily have come to the conclusion that oil was the principal concern of the U.S., & that as long as the price was right, America did not really care who owned the oil. He stated several times during the meeting that:
We clearly understand America's statement that it wants an easy flow of oil." To which Ambassador Glaspie responded,
My own estimate after 25 years of service in the area is that your claims should receive strong support from your brother Arabs....I would only ask you to examine the possibility of not charging too high a price for oil".
Saddam reassured her with; we do not want too high a price. $25.00 a barrel is not too high."
Glaspie agreed. We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil producing states."
Glaspie also went on to reaffirm that, I have a directive from the President that I should work to expand & deepen relations with Iraq," & that, President Bush is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."
In retrospect, this meeting looked remarkably like an invitation for Saddam to go ahead & do as he pleased with Kuwait.
A few days later, Ambassador Glaspie left for a long-scheduled vacation.
Perhaps what is even more revealing than the above conversation is a comment made by Glaspie some months later in an interview with The New York Times. While discussing this above meeting & the possible signals that it was sending to Saddam, she disclosed that, I didn't think--& nobody else did-- that the Iraqis were going to take ALL of Kuwait."
This sounds remarkably similar to the sentiments expressed by American policy experts 10 years earlier, at the outset of the Iran-Iraq war. We didn't expect Saddam to take all of Khuzistan". The unspoken affirmation was that they did expect him to take some of it. Apparently Saddam's only sin was that he had miscalculated how much was being offered to him, & perhaps took more than he should have. He had concluded that, with America still trying to appease him, & public assurances that it had no commitment to defend Kuwait, the way was clear for him to assume regional superpower status. In one bold move, he reasoned: Iraq could assert its historical claim to Kuwait, reverse the territorial injustices imposed by Britain so many years ago & finally gain access to the sea. It would also cut the Gordian knot of debt & simmering discontent left by the war with Iran & give vent to the widespread resentment in Iraq that the Gulf Arabs had lived in luxury throughout the war while Iraqis had bled & died to protect them.
In a sense Saddam had been color blind. He had seen a green light, when what was actually being displayed was a flashing amber--proceed with caution. The evidence does seem to clearly indicate that in yet another case history from the textbook of realpolitiks, a revised" Iraq-Kuwait border, in which Iraq would keep a limited amount of disputed territory, was part of the price that the U.S. & the other Arab states had agreed to pay in their longstanding effort to make a pet of Saddam Hussein.
On July 31, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly, testifying at a public Congressional hearing, was asked what U.S. forces would do if Iraq invaded Kuwait. He replied that the U.S. had no formal commitments to defend Kuwait.
On Aug.2, Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Taking the Blame

Ever since the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. steadfastly refused to take any of the blame for the conflict, placing the sole responsibility for the war squarely on Saddam's shoulders. This was part of the reasoning behind their decision not to negotiate in any way with Saddam. They felt that they were so clearly in the right, that to compromise at all would be to send a signal to the World that, crime pays".
According to accepted norms of international law, Iraq was in the wrong, but as we have seen, such law has been more often than not casually brushed aside by the West when it was politically expedient to do so. So was the U.S. right in blaming Saddam?
John Major, then the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, argued against negotiations with Iraq, reasoning that when a burglar commits break-ins, the police don't negotiate with him. He is clearly in the wrong, & the job of the policeman is to stop him. This analogy is somewhat simplistic, given that millions of lives were at stake, not a simple burglary. Mr. Major also overlooked one key factor in the comparison. Saddam was largely a creation of the West, the powers that be, & if he had risen to the point where he felt he could bully smaller neighbors with impunity, it was to a certain extent because he felt his powerful sponsors would look the other way, as indeed they had in the past.
So, to pursue the analogy of Mr. Major, would the case against the burglar be so clear cut if it were subsequently learned that he had been schooled in the craft of robbery by the very people who were now accusing him? If it were disclosed in a court of law that these same people had encouraged him to commit other crimes & had supplied him with the tools of his trade for several years, the accusers of the burglar would themselves stand accused of the crimes of aiding & abetting a criminal, counseling a crime & being an accessory after the fact.
Charges of aiding & abetting a criminal can be laid against someone who does not actually commit a crime, but who knew that the crime was going to be committed & did something to assist the criminal. If you, for example, supplied weapons to someone who was going to commit a robbery, then you would be just as guilty of the offence as the actual robber. Counseling a crime applies to someone who encourages another person to commit an offence. Again, such a person is considered just as guilty as the criminal. An accessory after the fact is someone who knows a person has committed a crime & comforts receives or assists him in any way to make an escape.
Given the policy of the West towards Iraq from 1980 to the early 1990, could not a case be made that they were guilty, on a much larger scale, of all the above crimes? Did they not finance & arm Saddam & make it possible for him to commit the crimes that he did? Did they not counsel him on how to defeat his opponents? And did they not stand idly by & turn a blind eye & actually defend him while he was committing all the past atrocities that he is now accused of? And finally, when they knew that he had intentions to invade at least part of Kuwait, did they not purposely & in a public manner let him know that they would not oppose him, even if it inevitably meant bloodshed & the violation of the sovereignty of Kuwait?
Can it really be believed that if the U.S. had wanted to prevent aggression, it would have failed to issue an ultimatum to Saddam? So should not the U.S. bear responsibility for the disastrous chain of events that their amoral cold-blooded miscalculations (We didn't think they would take ALL of Kuwait.") Should not the U.S. be held responsible for the subsequent suffering of the people of Kuwait & Iraq?--Not to mention the ecological nightmare that the region went through with the burning of the oil fields and the use of Depleted Uranium ordinances?
Much has been made of President Bush's claim that Saddam was worse than Hitler". A more accurate comparison could be made between the legendary Dr. Frankenstein & the monster that he created. Dr. Frankenstein applied all the powers of science to concoct an improved kind of being, only to create a monster. Like a modern day Frankenstein, the politicians, businessmen & military leaders of the West have generated the frightening figure that Hussein has become.
The U.S., Britain, France, Germany & the Soviets attempted to impose their political will on Iraq while amassing enormous profits from the sales of their killing machines, & they begat a creature that they were no longer able to control, so they had to destroy it. They all had a hand in creating him, & should have been held responsible for the catastrophe ensued.

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