1990 cable details crucial meeting on eve of Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

[Joanne98]

A previously secret US diplomatic cable from 1990, published by WikiLeaks on New Year’s Day, provides a detailed account of a crucial meeting between the US ambassador to Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the eve of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

The cable was sent from the US Embassy in Baghdad to the State Department in Washington to recount a lengthy exchange between US Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein over the mounting tensions between Iraq and Kuwait.

The meeting marked a key turning point in US policy toward Iraq and set the stage for the massive American military intervention launched by President George H.W. Bush in the first Persian Gulf War, which began barely five months later.

A transcript of the Glaspie-Hussein meeting was obtained by the New York Times, which reported on its contents in September 1990, and the cable itself was declassified in 1998.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/iraq-j04.shtml