Werzit

Intel - History
Iraq War 1990-1991
Gulf War

"In God we trust.
All others we monitor."

• The Los Angeles Times and London Daily Telegraph of February 25, 1992, report Bush signed a top secret directive ordering closer ties with Baghdad.
• The directive approved one billion dollars in aid, coming nine months before Saddam invaded Kuwait.
• The reports indicate the aid permitted  Saddam to acquire food reserves while buying weapons.
• Additionally, the London Daily Telegraph reports according to the documents "the incidents were part of a patern of personal efforts by Mr. Bush--both as president and vice president--to support Saddam".

Shat al-Arab Waterway

• Iraq charges that Kuwait has been drilling sideways through the Shat al-Arab waterway, to reach Iraqi oil.
• Two main points on this charge
• 1.) Could be completely false charge, to claim right to invade Kuwait and seize oil, which would help recover high costs of financing 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War
• 2.) Could be an accurate statement

• If this were a false charge, and we assume the US State Department was acting on reliable information, then this would not explain April Glaspie's position on Iraq invading Kuwait.
• If this were a false charge, and we assume the US State Department was not acting on reliable information, then it would seem reasonable for the United States to reassess its position later on, but this does not appear to have happened either.
• If this charge is true, then it would explain Saddam's enthusiasm for invading Kuwait, since he assumed he fought Iran in part on behalf of the United States, and had just been given free reign to occupy Kuwait, by the US State Department.

April Glaspie Meets with Saddam Hussein

• At dawn on August 2, 1990, approximately 100,000 Iraqi troops and three hundred tanks crossed the border and rolled unimpeded down an empty superhighway that Kuwait had built several years earlier as a token of friendship with Iraq. (Why Nations Go To War, p. 194)

• Iraq whose war debt with Iran had left it $70 billion in debt and with tremendous reconstruction costs...Not only could he (Saddam Hussein - ed) not loot Kuwait's treasury, but by acquiring its enormous oil fields he would control 20 percent of the world's oil supply and thus exercise a stranglehold over the Western countries he hated. (Why Nations Go To War, p. 194)

Thatcher: "Don't Go Wobbly Against Iraq!"

• In the evening of 26th August President Bush telephoned me from Kennebunkport.
• I told him how pleased I was with Security Council Resolution 665 which had been passed the day before, enabling us to enforce the embargo.
• We must use our powers to stop Iraqi shipping.
• This was no time to go wobbly.
• Information we had gleaned from secret sources must be published to show up sanctions busting.
• The President agreed. I told him that the only area in which I thought we were not doing well was in the propaganda battle.
• We were now probably going into a longish period to see whether sanctions would work and we must not let the faint hearts grow in strength.
• The President was worried also about the use of the port of Aqaba in Jordan to evade sanctions and I told him that I would raise the question when I saw King Hussein in a few days' time.

• He was clearly very uneasy about the line he was taking.
• He began by making a forty minute statement which yet again justified what the Iraqis had done.
• I said that I was amazed at his account of what was in fact a blatant act of aggression. Iraq was a country which had used chemical weapons not just in war but against its own people.
• Saddam Hussein was not only an international brigand, he was also a loser who had done immense damage both to the Palestinian cause and to the Arabs and who over eight years had vainly thrown wave after wave of young Iraqis into the war against Iran.
• I said that the King should not be attempting to negotiate on Iraq's behalf but rather to implement sanctions against it. I could not have been more direct.
• But no amount of pressure was likely to alter the calculation which the King had made: that he could not come out openly against Saddam Hussein and survive.

• IRAQ AIMED CHEMICAL WARHEADS AT ISRAEL IN AUGUST 1990...following Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqi military deployed nearly a dozen chemical warhead-tipped SCUD missiles to the deserts of western Iraq.
  [source: Target Iran, p. 5]

• SAUDI VIEW OF DESERT STORM VS. US VIEW The Americans viewed themselves as disinterested liberators. Many Saudis viewed the Americans as foreign, Christian occupiers defiling the land and intervening to save the widely despised Kuwaiti ruling family. [source: America's Secret War, p. 234]

• The Israeli nuclear-tipped Jericho missile force was placed on full alert for only the third time in its (Israel's - ed) history.
  [source: Target Iran, p. 8]

• The Jerusalem Post reports "Desert Storm" (whose name comes from prophetic writings) was the war fought for Israel by another power, which would usher in the Messianic Era.

• Bush called upon the entire nation to pray for victory in the war against the enemy, a war which was to usher in "100 years of peace."

• Iraqi border police arrested American civilian explosive specialist Clinton Adam Hall while he was clearing mines along the Iraq Kuwait border. According to the International Herald Tribune, October 10, 1992, Hall was operating along the new border established between Iraq and Kuwait near the port of Umm Qasr, a border that Iraq still disputes.

• The Tehran daily Salam, reported national police chief, General Reza Seifollahi, announcement  that the government is investigating a series of oil well bombings near Ahvaz, the capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province.
• This was the first official confirmation of reports that surfaced last month about bombings in the region.

• "The intelligence ministry is following the case of bombings in Khuzestan oil installations which occurred over the past month," said Seifollahi.
• Ahvaz is a city 50 kilometers from the Iraqi border, and is one of the most highly-contested regions during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

• Turkey and Egypt each sent senior diplomats to Baghdad to promote diplomacy between their nations, and against the wishes of the US-led anti-Iraq coalition in which both countries had played a leading role.
• Turkey sent a charge d'affaires, Said Calislar, to reopen the Turkish embassy in Baghdad.

• Egypt sent a senior diplomat at the consular level.
• Iraq, in exchange, agreed to send a senior diplomat to Cairo.

• The Iraqi delegation included Riyadh al-Qaysi, an Iraqi secretary of foreign affairs and Tarek Tukmaji, the governor of the Central Bank of Iraq.
• The French government admitted to the meeting, but made the additional claim that the delegation was in France to meet with UNESCO
• Iraqi Vice Prime Minister Tarek Aziz also reportedly met with Paris Mayor Jaques Chirac at a secret meeting in Geneva on June 22.
• The French oil companies Elf and Total, which had operated oil wells in Iraq before the Gulf War, sent a delegation for talks in Baghdad.

• Venezuelan Ambassador Ernesto Velasco Rojas arrived in Baghdad, commenting to the press that "my mission will be 95% petrol, five per cent politics."