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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (187277)	9/27/2001 2:55:02 PM
From: Rollcast...	Respond to of 769670

Memorize this... Message 16422289

To: Skywatcher who wrote (187277)	9/27/2001 2:59:14 PM
From: H-Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

We in fact did know about the build up of troops on the Kuwaiti border. We told the Kuwaiti's of the build up and they were unconcerned. Then April Glaspie performed her job in the most clumsey of manners to say the least. This makes your claim of a CIA friend doubtful --------------------- RICHARD HAAS, President's Middle East Advisor: The idea that, on a Sunday afternoon or something, I was going to stroll into the Oval and go, "Oh, by the way, Mr. President, Saddam Hussein is going to mass 100,000-plus forces and is going to walk into Kuwait and is going to make this the 19th province of Iraq and this is going to be the major test of the post-cold war world"_ that was too big. It was too dramatic. NARRATOR: [May, 1990, Baghdad Arab Summit] Two months earlier, Saddam Hussein had welcomed his neighbor and ally, the emir of Kuwait. The emir ruled one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Kuwait owned one tenth of the world's oil. Iraq was rich in oil, too, but Saddam's military spending had pushed his regime to the brink of bankruptcy. Saddam blamed the emir for his troubles, accusing Kuwait of flooding the market with cheap oil, lowering prices and hastening Iraq's descent into economic crisis. TARIQ AZIZ, Iraqi Foreign Minister: We started to realize that there is a conspiracy against Iraq, a deliberate conspiracy against Iraq by Kuwait, organized, devised by the United States. NARRATOR: Later that day, Saddam would issue the emir a stark warning. TARIQ AZIZ: He said, "Each dollar less in price means to us one billion in revenues for a year. If you do not mean waging a war against Iraq, please stop it." NARRATOR: [June, 1990] But the emir took a tough stand and, a month later, Saddam's inner circle decided that unless Kuwait handed over $10 billion to Iraq immediately, they would invade. TARIQ AZIZ: Iraq had no choice but to act, either to be destroyed, to be suffocated and strangled inside its territory or attack the enemy on the outside. NARRATOR: [July 16, 1990, Southern Iraq] The Republican Guard was ordered to move south toward Iraq's border with Kuwait. These were the Iraqi Army's elite divisions, equipped with Soviet tanks. No other Middle Eastern country except Israel had forces to rival them. Soon 30,000 Iraqi troops had massed on the border between Iraq and Kuwait. [July 24, 1990, Baghdad] With the crisis building, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak rushed to Baghdad, sent by Kuwait and the Arab world to arrange negotiations. Mubarak, one of America's closest allies in the region, was determined to discover Saddam's plans. It was an encounter that would have far-reaching consequences. pbs.org