Bush Senior had a period of eight days in which to send a simple message to Saddam: "Do not invade Kuwait or we will punish you." He did not do so. He was wish-washy. See further:
At 16:04 16/05/2005 -0700, you wrote:
Keith,
You have probably forgotten but the wishy-washy didn't happen.
It's just another of these things that are repeated until it becomes true.
I sent the actual transcript to FW a couple of years ago.
In fact, the two were talking about the peace talks that were taking place between Kuwait, Egypt and Iraq.
Not so.
The Ambassadress - pointing out that the US had no say in this matter wished the talks well (as I remember). I might be able to find the actual excerpt again.
I think that Saddam invaded two or three weeks later.
Harry
Let's have your evidence, then. Mine follows. This is from the updated edition of Con Coughlin's book, "Saddam: The Secret Life" (pp250-251) Pan Macmillan, 2005. As far as I'm aware Coughlin's book is considered to be objective and as accurate as it's possible to be so far. (In the following, Glaspie is April Glaspie, the American Ambassador to Kuwait. Saddam's "bellicosity" below refers to Saddam's threat that "we will deploy pressure and force".)
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According to a transcript of the conversation between Glaspie and Saddam, which was leaked by the Iraqis, and whose veracity has never been denied by the U.S. State Department, Ambassador Glaspie, rather than responding to Saddam's bellicosity, replied simply, "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." She went on to compliment Saddam on his "extraordinary efforts" to rebuild Iraq after the war with Iran. And when Saddam reiterated his claim that the United States was supporting Kuwaiti attempts to undermine the Iraqi economy, she replied, "President Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq." Finally Glaspie said that she had been instructed "in the spirit of friendship" to ascertain Saddam's intentions with regard to Kuwait, which, from the American point of view, was the main purpose of the meeting. Saddam repeated his contention that Kuwait was the aggressor, because it had deliberately driven down the oil price, thereby threatening the livelihoods of Iraqis, "harming even the milk our children drink and the pension of the widow who lost her husband during the war, the pensions of the orphans who lost their parents." He concluded the meeting by stating that, if an agreement was not reached with Kuwait, "then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death."
Glaspie apparently came away from the meeting believing that Saddam was full of bluster, and was not intent on invading Kuwait. Five days later she flew back to Washington to consult with President Bush. Three days after that Iraq invaded Kuwait. When details of Glaspie's meeting with Saddam were published by the Iraqis in Baghdad, the forty-eight-year-old career diplomat, who had wide experience of the Arab world, was accused of, at best, naivete, or, at worst, having given Saddam a green light" to invade Kuwait. It was an accusation she rigorously denied. In an interview published in the New York Times in late 1990, she said: "Obviously I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait. Every Kuwaiti and Saudi, every analyst in the Western world, was wrong too."
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Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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