Did Bush Sr. trick Saddam into starting the 1st Gulf War?

[Yollam]

Did Bush Sr. trick Saddam into starting the 1st Gulf War, or was he as incompetent as his idiot son so often seems to be?

For the few of you who are still ignorant of the events that began the first gulf war, I provide this:

http://www.rense.com/general46/gil.htm

April Glaspie - Saddam Hussein
Conversation 1990
Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy
The New York Times International
Sunday, September 23, 1990
Special to The New York Times
12-19-3


GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America.
.....

Frankly, we can see only that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the U.A.E. and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned. And for this reason, I received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship -- not in the spirit of confrontation -- regarding your intentions.

Hardly a stern warning for Iraq to respect Kuwait's border, is it?


After Iraq invaded, Glaspie was quoted as saying "Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait"

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/?Page=Article&ID=5955

http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1999/05/27/p23s3.htm

[rfranklin]

1. He wanted to be a "war President" but...

he underestimated how quickly the glow would fade. That's why Junior and his puppetmasters so carefully choreographed the current debabcle.

[Richard Steele]

2. I didn't forget about that. I always thought they set him up. nm

[Old and In the Way]

3. We were funding Saddam up to the day he invaded Kuwait.

My understanding is that Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi oilfields. Personally, I think Bush suckered Saddam into thinking we would support his invasion of Kuwait....but I believe we decided to use this as a justification to establish a US military presence in the region. Bush1 was beholden to the House of Saud and the ruling class in Kuwait, so I think this was a fairly simple double-cross. Saddam was our useful proxy-tool in the Iraq/Iran war, but with Sadamm's growing nationalism and decision to go off the USD for Iraqi oil sales...that sealed the deal.

Like Father, Like Son....both Bushsters are sockpuppets for Big Oil. Our whole energy/foreign policy has been driven by Big Oil for the past 25 years.

[applegrove]

4. Saddam was an aggressive monster. He was more than capable of

going to war for his own narcissistic reasons.

[seabeyond]

5. it is on record one of bush 1's people implied was ok

for saddam to go in only to later go after him. that is not saying saddam is a good guy.

[rinsd]

8. It's also on record that Aziz said she didn't.

I'm curious as to where this transcript comes from.

[Yollam]

11. Ummm, the New York Times...

According to Wiki, there were two different transcripts, but both left the impression that Glaspie was signalling US indifference to Iraq's then obvious plan to invade. (Satellite recon at the time showed 100,000 Iraqi troops massed on the Kuwaiti border).

[Yollam]

7. Dumbya is an aggressive monster who went to war for NO reason.

Would that give a theoretical, more powerful country the right to invade, annex and install a puppet government in the United States?

[Cults4Bush]

10. They also faked satelite photos, and coached the Kuwaiti ambasadors

daughter to lie. Kuwait was also illeaglly cross drilling into Iraqs oil reserves. Kuwaitis in general were considered the most overblown snobs in the ME, going os far as to game other countries entire monetary systems illegally and for profit.

The fake satelite pics were instrumental in Saudi Arabi letting us build one of the most technologically advanced and all around largets airbases ever built on their soil. This was apparently the last starw fro a guy you made have heard of. Osama bin Laden.

Saddam may have been a monster but he was our monster that we used to constantly keep at war with Iran. Think of it as a delaying tactic because that is what Reagan and Bush 1 thought of it as. We apparently made all kinds of promises to him to help him out more an dinstead we egged Kuwait on knowing that Saddam would attack and we would have to go to war from Saudi soil, which is would be an opening to build a base there.

Saddams monsterhood is nothing compared to Reagan and Bushs they who consistently and constantly agitated warfare between Iraq and Iran during the 80s just so they didn't have to fix problems that we also had a hand in. Like the Sha and Saddams coup.

Never mind that Rummy also gave him a nice pat on the back with a coddled bit of umbrage at his use of WMDs, which he explained to Rummy he needed to use if he was going to keep fighting this war with Iran for us. Which in essence he was most definitely doing.

But you go believing that it was all his own doing.

[dusmcj]

6. he needed something to replace the cold war.

All that power bound up in the great polarization of the cold war, countries subverted, industries sustained, all in service of the great battle between socialism and capitalism. Poof, gone in 6 months because of some unruly mobs in Old Europe. What to do, what to keep the people occupied with ? Dualities are always more fun than multiplicities, hence his son's enthusiasm for keeping a steady supply of daemons flowing our way. Pops by contrast needed to let the world know that the US was not turning into a softie now that the Great Satan had been subverted, but rather than no one had better fuck with the US or its interests. Grenada and Panama were not interesting examples, we needed to go up against something more than pissant banana republics. Voila, a dumb A-rab ready to play into our hands. While at home we were urged to become Connected and Under Control because if we didn't we'd Pay the Price.

[TahitiNut]

9. Yes. They "wrong-footed" him.

The dispute over Kuwait (claimed by Iraq as an illegally secessionist part of Iraq) and over the border oilfields was long-established. Glaspie clearly gave him a message meant to be interpreted as a go-ahead.

If we look at the Downing Street Memos, we see the same kind of "wrong-footing' contemplated as a casus belli - most certainly considered as an encore.