And her response: what you do with Arabs is your business.... God, you can't be this dense.
"... [she] took the straight American line, which is, we do not take positions on border disputes between friendly countries. That's standard. That's what you always say. You would not have said, 'Mr. President, if you really are considering invading Kuwait, by God, we'll bring down the wrath of God on your palaces and on your country, and you'll all be destroyed.' She wouldn't say that, nor would I. Neither would any diplomat." -- James Akins, US Amb to Saudi Arabia
"There were no mixed signals. It was a routine meeting. She didn't say anything extraordinary beyond what any professional diplomat would say without previous instructions from his government." -- Tariq Aziz (who was in the meeting)
Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, writing in the New York Times on February 21, 2003, disagreed with the views of observers like Edward Mortimer:
"In fact, all the evidence indicates the opposite: Saddam Hussein believed it was highly likely that the United States would try to liberate Kuwait but convinced himself that we would send only lightly armed, rapidly deployable forces that would be quickly destroyed by his 120,000-man Republican Guard. After this, he assumed, Washington would acquiesce to his conquest."
In short, pretty much everyone who has commented on this subject agrees with me, not you. |
