CHAPTER EIGHT: War Drums
Given that James Baker and George H. W. Bush later compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, why did they support the Iraqi dictator for more than seven years after they first learned of his atrocities? In his 1995 memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, a somewhat chagrined James Baker looks back on his years as secretary of state and attempts to explain his role in forging this munificent policy toward such a brutal monster. The strongest argument Baker makes is that initially the United States needed Saddam's Iraq to contain the emerging threat of Iran's Islamic fundamentalism. He also asserts, less persuasively, that Iraq was "a potentially helpful Arab ally" in the Middle East peace process. [1] Even less convincingly, Baker argues that giving Saddam incentives might "stem nuclear proliferation, bring economic benefits, and enhance prospects for Arab-Israeli peace." [2] Finally, Baker cites banal domestic economic and political considerations. The Department of Agriculture loan guarantees to Iraq, he says, were extremely popular with American agricultural interests. If the Bush administration had not supported these programs, Baker adds, "we would surely have been castigated" by Democratic congressmen.
By the late eighties, however, neoconservative Republican policy makers such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz had begun voicing their discontent with the Bush administration's pro-Saddam policies. A militant hawk sometimes referred to by critics as the Prince of Darkness, Perle was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, later chaired the Defense Policy Board, and was often a supporter of policies endorsed by the Likud, Israel's largest right-wing political party. Even during the Iran-Iraq War, Perle had been uncomfortable with supporting Saddam and felt that "the right course immediately after the end of that war would have been to say to Saddam, now we've had enough of you too, and we're not gonna tolerate it." [3]
By the spring of 1990, Saddam Hussein's love affair with the White House had survived ten years of the Reagan-Bush era, but thanks to Saddam's overreaching, Richard Perle was about to get his wish. As a rule, in the Arab world it didn't hurt to lash out at Israel. But on April 2, Saddam made the kind of slip of the tongue of which diplomatic catastrophes are borne, boasting that he had chemical weapons and would use them to "make fire eat up half of Israel." [4] James Baker's State Department immediately issued a statement saying the remarks were "inflammatory, irresponsible, and outrageous." [5]
Saddam was so stunned by the angry reaction from Washington that he promptly got on the phone to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and demanded that Fahd send someone to Iraq immediately to act as a go-between with the United States. The best man for the job was Fahd's nephew Prince Bandar. [6]
It was the kind of task at which Bandar excelled. By now a specialist in back-channel operations, Bandar had so assiduously cultivated the powers that be in Washington that he lived in a realm far above any other mere "diplomat." Bandar was close to James Baker, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. [7] Between 1984 and 1987, he met or talked to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger at least sixty-four times. [8] Colin Powell noted with distress that the Saudi billionaire functioned as if he were a cabinet officer within the Bush administration. [9] Even that was an understatement: Bandar was free from the congressional oversight that constrained cabinet officers.
But his relationship with President Bush was what truly set Bandar apart. During Reagan's first term, Bandar had lunched with Vice president Bush several times a year. In 1985, when Bush was just beginning to be derided as a wimp by the media, Bandar staged a huge party for him with entertainment by singer Roberta Flack. [10] Bandar said he regarded the president "almost like a buddy." [11]
The relationship went both ways. From the administration's point of view, Bandar was important because he was both a confidant of King Fahd's and had had close contact with Saddam Hussein. As reported by Bob Woodward in The Commanders, on April 5, just after Saddam's remarks about Israel, Bandar flew to Iraq in his own private jet. When Bandar sat down with Saddam, the Iraqi dictator insisted that he had been misinterpreted. "I want to assure President Bush and His Majesty King Fahd that I will not attack Israel," he said. [12]
Four days later, Bandar met with Bush in the Oval Office and relayed news of the conversation. Bush was stunned. If Saddam didn't mean to attack Israel, then why had he said it? Even though Bush was skeptical about trusting Saddam, he resumed his generous policies toward Iraq. The Commerce Department tried to stop the flow of U.S. technology to Iraq, but its efforts were stymied by the White House. In May 1990, the Bush administration continued to share military intelligence with Saddam. In July, the White House pushed for additional agricultural loans to Iraq and rebuffed efforts by the Defense and Commerce departments to restrict the export of dual-use technology. And at the end of July 1990, Bush opposed congressional efforts to impose sanctions on Iraq -- all in an effort to bring Iraq "into the family of nations." [13] Bush and Saddam had kissed and made up.
Or so it seemed. Meanwhile, the State Department joined Defense and Commerce in becoming increasingly concerned about Saddam. On July 19, State sent a memo to Baker advising stricter controls because Saddam was developing chemical and biological weapons and was working on nuclear weapons. "Iraq has been attempting to obtain items to support these proliferation activities from U.S. exporters, in some cases successfully," said the memo, which was initialed by Baker to acknowledge that he had read it. [14] According to the memo, a review had uncovered seventy-three export licenses for goods sent to Iraq that were "probably proliferation related," including seventeen licenses for bacteria that could be used with biological weapons and computers for chemical and weapons programs.
Finally, Baker changed course. On July 25, he asked Commerce secretary Robert Mosbacher for new controls over exports. "Iraq's extraordinarily aggressive weapons proliferation efforts make this situation urgent," wrote Baker.
That same day, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, [i] was summoned to a rare meeting with Saddam Hussein. For years, Iraq had nursed a grudge with Kuwait concerning the oil-rich border shared by the two countries. Earlier that month, Iraq had accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil and engaging in an "imperialist-Zionist plan" to depress oil prices through overproduction. [15] According to Al Jumhuriya, a government-controlled newspaper in Baghdad, Kuwait had seized Iraqi territory and stolen $2.4 billion of oil from disputed oil fields along their border. [16]
On July 27, 1990, Bandar told the administration that Saddam had assured Arab leaders that he was not going to invade Kuwait. [17] But Saddam was lying. By then he had already sent thirty thousand troops to the Kuwaiti border. By July 31, the number had risen to one hundred thousand. [18] On August 1, a CIA assessment reported, "Baghdad almost certainly believes it is justified in taking military action to reclaim its 'stolen' territory and oil rights." [19] The very next day, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. By the middle of August, the total number of Iraqi troops in Kuwait and the nearby region was more than two hundred thousand. [20] Worse, the Iraqis were within striking distance of Saudi Arabia. According to Dick Cheney, another forty thousand Iraqi soldiers had been deployed in southern Iraq, near Saudi Arabia. [21]
This was Bush's worst nightmare. To defend the biggest oil fields in the world, he had helped build Saddam into a powerful military force as a bulwark against the Islamic fundamentalist threat. But now Saddam himself had become the threat. Iraq already had enormous oil reserves. If he won the Saudi oil fields as well, with the oil from Iraq, Kuwait, and the Saudis, Saddam would control about 40 percent of the world's known oil reserves. [22] To President Bush, also an oilman, such a prospect was horrifying. Saddam would be able to manipulate oil prices at will and would have the American economy at his mercy. The Reagan and Bush administrations had created a monster.
Now the Bush team dramatically switched course. On August 5, President Bush stepped off Marine One on the White House lawn and, referring to the Iraqi invasion, uttered the most famous words of his presidency: "This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."
The spontaneous remark meant one thing: war. [23] But before that could happen, the United States had to build an international coalition; it had to make sure the Saudis would allow the use of American troops on Saudi soil; and it had to build domestic support. As the United States began to deploy forces to the Middle East, James Baker brought the Soviets on board, worked the United Nations Security Council, and lined up $15 billion each in promises from the Saudis and Kuwait.
That was just the beginning. On November 3, 1990, Baker left Washington and visited twelve countries on three continents over the next three weeks. According to his memoirs, the day after Thanksgiving, "I had set a personal record with a thirty-seven-hour day that took me from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Bogota, Columbia, to Los Angeles, then home to Houston. ... I met personally with all my Security Council counterparts in an intricate process of cajoling, extracting, threatening, and occasionally buying votes." A coalition was coming together. [24]
But Saudi cooperation was still an open question. Close as Bush was to them, he could not be certain what course of action they might take. In fact, Bush and Bandar had wildly different views about Kuwait. Bush's relationship with Kuwait went back thirty years. When he was head of Zapata Off-Shore, he had built Kuwait's first offshore oil well with the approval of the ruling al-Sabah family of Kuwait. [25] The Kuwaitis were his benefactors and he was forever indebted to them. By contrast, Bandar had only contempt for Kuwait, which he derided at every opportunity, even stooping to bathroom humor. When Bandar excused himself to go to the men's room, he was known to say, "I've got to go to Kuwait." [26]
In addition, the royal family was divided. On the one hand, the House of Saud was outraged by Saddam. "[Saddam] doesn't realize that the implications of his actions are upsetting the world order," Fahd told Bush. "He is following Hitler in creating world problems ... I believe nothing will work with Saddam but the use of force." [27] On the other hand, the House of Saud would face fierce opposition from puritanical Islamic clerics if American "infidels" used the holy lands to attack Iraq. [28]
As a result, it was essential that the House of Saud see that Saddam was an imminent threat to their survival. On August 3, Cheney called Bandar to his office for a meeting with Colin Powell, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and National Security Council staffer Richard Haass. The purpose was to convince Bandar that Saddam intended to attack the House of Saud as well. Cheney and Powell took out overhead photos that showed three Iraqi divisions moving through Kuwait, one of them directly toward the Saudi border. [29] The other divisions might follow, and Riyadh was just 275 miles away. When Cheney arrived in Saudi Arabia a few weeks later and asked permission for American troops to use Saudi bases, King Fahd had clearly gotten the message. The Saudis "didn't just want (Saddam) ejected from Kuwait, they wanted him destroyed," said Secretary of State James Baker. "For them, the only solution was an American-led war that would annihilate Saddam's military machine once and for all." [30]
Having convinced the House of Saud, the Bush administration still had to win the hearts and minds of Americans. In the United States, one of the most effective lobbyists was Bandar. Again and again, he persuaded even the most unlikely allies in the United States -- thanks to an approach that was extraordinarily ecumenical for one of the preeminent custodians of an Islamic theocracy that reviled the West. At a memorable private breakfast in late October 1990, one could enjoy the spectacle of the most prominent Arab in America wooing over the capital's staunchest supporters of Israel, including Representatives Stephen J. Solarz of New York, Tom Lantos of California, and Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey. [31] Bandar even sent out Christmas cards to influential Washingtonians with a very non-Muslim message: "Behold, the angels said: 'O Mary, God giveth thee glad tiding of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and the Hereafter and of [the company of] those nearest God." [32]
Winning over the public at large, however, required more convincing. The problem was no matter how evil Saddam may have been, Americans seemed to find him more palatable than Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, who referred to the United States as the "Great Satan." True, as villains go, Saddam was straight out of central casting. He had killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, thousands of his own citizens, used chemical weapons, and committed atrocity after atrocity. But because Saddam had long been an ally of the Reagan and Bush administrations, such heinous crimes had gotten little attention in the media and few Americans thought of him as a dangerous enemy.
Given that Saddam's atrocities against Iran and the Kurds had not stirred the American populace, why should his invasion of Kuwait cause more than a ripple? Few Americans even knew where the tiny emirate was. Even if they did, why should Americans go to war over this particular border dispute? If this was about defending democracy, Kuwait certainly didn't make the cut. Only sixty-five thousand people out of a population of about 2 million were given the privilege of voting -- males who could prove Kuwaiti ancestry dating back to 1920. [33] Women had no political rights whatsoever. Executive power was in the hands of the emir, who was chosen by and was a member of the ruling al-Sabah family. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had described Kuwait as "a poisonous enemy of the United States" famous for its "singularly nasty" anti-Semitism. [34]
And since most Americans thought oil was not a good enough reason to go to war, both Bush and Baker floundered for a rationale to put soldiers in harm's way. "If you're [trying] to get me to say that low gasoline prices are worth American lives, it's not something I'm going to say," said Baker. [35]
"The fight isn't about oil," Bush asserted. "The fight is about naked aggression that will not stand."
All of which meant that Americans suddenly had to buy into the notion of Saddam's villainy, even though it was a villainy their government had secretly supported for many years. To that end, the Kuwaiti government swiftly poured millions of dollars into twenty public relations agencies, lobbying groups, and law firms to rally U.S. public opinion against Saddam. [36] On August 11, just nine days after the invasion, Hill & Knowlton agreed to represent Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a front group funded almost entirely by the Kuwaiti government. [37] [ii] The vast majority of the budget of Citizens for a Free Kuwait went to Hill & Knowlton.
Hill & Knowlton was not just the world's largest PR firm, it was also the most politically wired firm in the country. The firm's chairman, Robert Gray, had been a key aide in both of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns. On the Democratic side, the firm relied on Vice Chairman Frank Mankiewicz, who had worked for both Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern.
In this case, however, the most important politico on the Hill & Knowlton staff was the man running its Washington office, Craig Fuller, a friend of President George H. W. Bush's who had served as his chief of staff when Bush was vice president. With Fuller on the Kuwaiti account from day one, [38] Hill & Knowlton went into overdrive, putting 119 executives in twelve offices across the country on it. According to Second Front, John R. MacArthur's account of U.S. censorship and propaganda during the Gulf War, Hill & Knowlton organized a Kuwait Information Day on twenty college campuses on September 12. On Sunday, September 23, churches across the country observed a national day of prayer for the embattled emirate. The next day, Americans celebrated Free Kuwait Day. There were tens of thousands of bumper stickers and T-shirts, as well as media kits on Kuwaiti history. Hill & Knowlton's Lew Allison, a former news producer for CBS and NBC, created two dozen video news spots about Kuwait for the evening news. [39] All over the country, there were full-scale press conferences showing torture by the Iraqis. As the end of 1990 approached, the American media, which had largely ignored Saddam's atrocities against Iran and the Kurds when they took place, again and again broadcast reports of his mayhem.
Then, on October 10, Hill & Knowlton was granted a forum to present its evidence against Iraq before the congressional Human Rights Caucus. Their chief witness was a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl who was aid to have firsthand knowledge of Iraqi atrocities. She went only by her first name Nayirah. Her last name was withheld, presumably in the interests of preventing reprisals against her or her family. [40]
As recounted in Second Front, Nayirah cried as she testified about her time as a volunteer at the al-Addan hospital. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldier come into the hospital with guns and go into the room where fifteen babies were in incubators," she said. "They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." [41]
After the hearing, Congressman Tom Lantos said that "we have never had the degree of ghoulish and nightmarish horror stories coming from totally credible witnesses that we have at this time." President Bush said that he was happy that the atrocities in Kuwait had been highlighted on CNN. [42] Bush referred to the incubator story at least five more times during the next five weeks. [43] Amnesty International published the story with only a minor qualification, saying that over three hundred premature babies had been left to die. [44] Repeated again and again, it spread quickly across the globe.
As MacArthur pointed out, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the incubator story. Saddam had done many horrible things, but Nayirah's testimony suddenly enabled the press to compare him to Hitler. Here you had a guileless teenage girl's tearful account of a dictator so depraved he would have his soldiers kill innocent babies. Even though he had long supported Saddam, President Bush himself fueled the Hitler analogy, asserting that Saddam's troops had performed "outrageous acts of barbarism. ... I don't believe that Adolf Hitler ever participated in anything of that nature." [45]
Over the next three months, the "baby killer" story made its way along the media food chain. I t was referred to again and again in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. It was in the New York Times and the Sunday Times of London, on CBS and CNN, in Time, on the wires and in countless newspapers across the country from the Los Angeles Times to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But it wasn't true.
While the story was in the news, Middle East Watch, a New York based human rights organization, was also following up on it, but unlike most of the American press, it did not simply repeat previously published reports without verifying them. It sent an investigator named Aziz Abu-Hamad to hospitals in Kuwait, where he found many doctors who refuted the incubator story. In a January 6, 1991 memo, less than two weeks before the war began, Abu-Hamad noted, "I have yet to come across the name of one family whose premature baby was allegedly thrown out of an incubator." He added that while he could not irrevocably refute the charges about the incubators, he had found many bogus stories about Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait. "Many prominent Kuwaitis had been reported dead before I left for Saudi Arabia, but I was surprised to find them alive and well." [46]
On March 15, 1991, after the Gulf War was over, ABC News's John Martin finally sorted out the mess. In his news report, he quoted Dr. Mohammed Matar, the director of Kuwait's primary health care system, and his wife, Dr. Fayeza Youssef, chief of obstetrics. "No, (the Iraqis] didn't take [the babies] away from their incubator. ... To tell the truth ... no nurses to take care of these babies, and that's why they died." [47]
Martin again specifically asked if Iraqi soldiers had left the babies on the floors to die. "I think this is something just for propaganda," replied Matar. Even Amnesty International, the highly respected human rights organization that had helped publicize the story, now issued a retraction of sorts, asserting that its team had "found no reliable evidence that Iraqi forces had caused the death of babies by removing them or ordering their removal from incubators." [48]
How had such a false but provocative story become part of the conventional wisdom that created the war-frenzied support of the Gulf War? For that, one must go back to the original source of the story, Nayirah, the fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl who had testified before Congress. After all, what better source for reporters across the country than congressional testimony, even though it was not under oath, from a tearful teenage girl even though she declined to give her full name.
But who really was Nayirah? At the time of her testimony, her full name had been kept secret to protect her family from reprisals in occupied Kuwait. But, as John MacArthur revealed a year after the war was over, there was a better reason to keep her name secret. She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasir al-Sabah. "Such a pertinent fact might have led to impertinent demands for proof of Nayirah's whereabouts in August and September of 1990, when she said she witnessed the atrocities, as well as corroboration of her charges," MacArthur wrote. [49]
It is worth adding that Nayirah was not just the ambassador's daughter, but as such was a member of the ruling family of Kuwait, the same family that had granted oil concessions to George H. W. Bush's Zapata Off-Shore company thirty years earlier.
***
At the same time that Nayirah was telling Americans about Iraqi atrocities, the Pentagon began telling Americans about the looming Iraqi military threat. By mid-September, even before Nayirah's testimony, the Bush administration claimed that 250,000 Iraqi troops were in Kuwait and the surrounding region. But there was compelling evidence that the Iraqi military threat to the Saudis had either been vastly overstated by the United States or that Iraq had withdrawn its troops. In August, a Japanese newspaper approached Peter Zimmerman, a fellow with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, with photos of Kuwait taken by a Soviet commercial satellite company. Zimmerman showed the photos to various other experts and "all of us agreed we couldn't see anything in the way of military activity." [50]
The media, however, was too cautious to run with a story saying that the Pentagon had exaggerated the Iraqi military threat. Nevertheless, ABC News pursued the story and bought a set of five Soviet satellite pictures of eastern Kuwait and southern Iraq, which were taken on September 13, at a time during which the United States asserted that the Iraqi military force was at full strength. [51] According to Zimmerman, the photos were "astounding in their quality." [52] But when he reviewed them with another expert, both of them were shocked not by what they saw, but by what they didn't see. "We turned to each other and we both said, 'There's nothing there,' " said Zimmerman. Nothing suggested an Iraqi military presence anywhere in Kuwait. "In fact," Newsweek reported, "all they could see, in crystal-clear detail, was the U.S. buildup in Saudi Arabia." [53] Where were the Iraqi soldiers? The evidence strongly suggested that Cheney's presentation to Prince Bandar six weeks earlier vastly overstated the Iraqi threat -- or that the Iraqis had retreated.
ABC News, however, had neglected to obtain a photo showing one thirty-kilometer strip of land in Kuwait. Perhaps all the Iraqi troops were hiding in that sector. But an enterprising reporter in Florida named Jean Heller got her newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, to purchase the missing photo. It too showed no sign of the missing Iraqi troops. "The Pentagon kept saying the bad guys were there, but we don't see anything to indicate an Iraqi force in Kuwait of even twenty percent the size the administration claimed," Zimmerman told Heller. [54]
As the story spread, the Pentagon's PR machine shifted into damage-control mode. A spokesman said the military "sticks by its numbers," then went to work discouraging ABC, CBS, and the Chicago Tribune from pursuing the story. ABC News's Mark Brender explained that the network dropped it partly because the photos were inconclusive, but also because there was "a sense that you would be bucking the trend. ... If you're going to stick your neck out and say that the number of Iraqi forces may not be as high as the administration is saying, then you better be able to say how many there are." [55] One of the few major newspapers to suggest that Iraq never really showed up for battle en masse was Newsday, which, after the Gulf War was under way, reported that American troops had encountered a "phantom enemy." It noted that most of the huge Iraqi army, which was said to have half a million troops in Kuwait and southern Iraq, simply was nowhere to be seen. In addition, as if foreshadowing the Iraq War of 2003, Saddam Hussein's supposed chemical warfare never materialized.
One senior American commander told a Newsday reporter that the information about the Iraqi defenses put out before the war was highly exaggerated. "There was a great disinformation campaign surrounding this war," he said. [56]
***
Later, after America's overwhelming military superiority quickly defeated Iraq, only one serious criticism of George H. W. Bush's triumphant policy emerged -- and that came from within his own administration. Why on earth had he not allowed American troops to march all the way to Baghdad?
In A World Transformed, the book he and his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft published in 1998, Bush explained that he allowed Saddam to stay in power because "trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. ... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. ... There was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." [57]
That response was persuasive, but it did not satisfy everyone, particularly Paul Wolfowitz, the rising young policy maker in the neo-conservative camp who was then undersecretary of defense. In 1992, just after the Gulf War but while Bush was still in office, Wolfowitz oversaw the drafting of a policy statement on America's mission in the post-Cold War era. Called "Defense Planning Guidance," the forty-six-page classified document, which was coauthored by I. Lewis Libby, who later became Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, circulated at high levels in the Pentagon. After it was leaked to the press and met a hostile reaction, the White House ordered Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to rewrite the highly controversial document. The policy paper was never implemented during the administration of George H. W. Bush, and soon Bill Clinton was in office.
Nevertheless, a decade later, Wolfowitz's original draft became extraordinarily relevant. It outlined several scenarios in which U.S. interests might be threatened, focusing specifically on North Korea and Iraq, where the greatest dangers were the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and a sudden shock to the global supply of oil. The policy paper also asserted, somewhat patronizingly, that coalitions of the type Bush and Baker had put together for the Gulf War "hold considerable promise," but that in the end they were not necessarily the answer. The United States, Wolfowitz insisted, would have to be prepared to take unilateral military action. [58] Wolfowitz's policies suggested a new sort of militaristic idealism in which preemptive strikes were justifiable if they took out a brutal dictator. If such actions alienated America's longtime allies, he seemed to be saying, so be it. That was the price we must be prepared to pay. As to whether the new policy might commit the United States to enormous costs both in terms of human life and in dollars, or whether it might lead to even greater dangers, Wolfowitz had no answer.
_______________
[i] Glaspie was widely criticized for supposedly leaving Saddam with the impression that the United States was giving a green light to his invasion of Kuwait. But Tariq Aziz, who was present at the meeting between Saddam and Glaspie, told ABC TV's Good Morning America that she did nothing of the kind. "No, she didn't do that," said Mr. Aziz. "... We didn't have that false illusion that the United States would watch and would not react severely to any move towards Kuwait." He said Iraq knew before the invasion that there would be serious repercussions, including a harsh American reaction. "We knew that there would be a conflict."
[ii] The Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totaled $17,861.
NOTES:
1. James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 262-63.
2. Ibid., p. 264.
3. "Richard Perle: The Making of a Neo-Conservative," transcript, interview with Ben Wattenberg, Public Broadcasting System's Think Tank, www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript/017.html .
4. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 268.
5. Bob Woodward, The Commanders, p. 200.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 213.
8. Stephen Engelberg, "U.S.-Saudi Deals in 90's Shifting Away from Cash Toward Credit," New York Times, August 23, 1993, p. A 1.
9. Evan Thomas, with John Barry, Thomas M. Defrank, and Douglas Waller, "The Reluctant Warrior," Newsweek, May 13, 1001, p. 18.
10. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 200.
11. David B. Ottaway, "Been There, Done That; Prince Bandar, One of the Great Cold Warriors, faces the Yawn of an Era," Washington Post, July 21, 1996, p. Fl.
12. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 202.
13. Murray Waas and Craig Unger, "In the Loop," New Yorker, November 2, 1992, p. 64ff.
14. Douglas Frantz, "Bush Denial on Iraq Arms Aid Challenged," Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1992, p. A 24.
15. Carlyle Murphy, "Iraq Accuses Kuwait of Plot to Steal Oil, Depress Prices; Charge Seen as Part of Gulf Power Move by Saddam Hussein," Washington Post, July 18, 1990.
16. Caryle Murphy, "Iraq Takes Hard Line as Talks Open; Baghdad Press Insists That Kuwait Accede to Demands," Washington Post, July 31, 1990, p. A 14.
17. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 232.
18. Murphy, "Iraq Takes Hard Line as Talks Open," p. A 14.
19. "CIA Support to the US Military During the Persian Gulf War," Persian Gulf Illnesses Task Force, Director of Central Intelligence, June 16, 1997, National Security Archives, www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB63/doc6.pdf .
20. Molly Moore, "Bush Stresses Saddam's Isolation After the Arab League Vote," Washington Post, August 12, 1990, p. A 21.
21. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Iraqis fortify Defense in Kuwait; Ground Battle Would Result in Significant U.S. Casualties, Officials Warn," Washington Post, August 21, 1990, p. A 1.
22. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 226.
23. Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush, p. 458.
24. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 304-5.
25. Kevin Philips, "Bush's Worst Political Nightmare," Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1991, p. M4; and Anthony Kimery, "A Well of a Deal," Common Cause, Spring 1991.
26. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 214.
27. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p. 320.
28. Ibid., p. 321.
29. Woodward, The Commanders, p. 243.
30. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 289.
31. Evans and Novak, November 8, 1990.
32. John Elvin, "Inside the Beltway," Washington Times, December 14, 1990, p. A6.
33. John R. MacArthur, Second Front, p. 43.
34. Ibid., p. 44.
35. David Hoffman, "Gulf Crisis Tests Baker as Diplomat," Washington Post, November 2, 1990, p. A 1.
36. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (Common Courage Press, 1995), web version from PRWatch.org.
37. Ibid.
38. O'Dwyer's FARA Report, vol. 5, no. 1 (January 1991), pp. 8, 10.
39. MacArthur, Second Front, p. 150.
40. Ibid., pp. 57-58.
41. Ibid., p.58.
42. Ibid., p. 60.
43. Ibid., p. 65.
44. Ibid., p. 66.
45. Ibid., p. 70.
46. Ibid., pp. 68-69.
47. Ibid., p. 73.
48. Ibid., p. 74.
49. John MacArthur, "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?" Seattle Post Intelligencer, January 12, 1992, p. D 1.
50. MacArthur, Second Front, p. 173
51. Ned Zeman, "Periscope," Newsweek, December 3, 1990, p. 6.
52. MacArthur, Second Front, p. 174.
53. Zeman, "Periscope," p. 6.
54. Jean Heller, "Photos Don't Show Buildup," St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 1991, p. A 1.
55. MacArthur, Second Front, p. 174.
56. Ibid., pp. 177-78.
57. Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p. 489.
58. "The War Behind Closed Doors," PBS Frontline, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ ... /wolf.html.