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

To: American Spirit who wrote (500686)	11/29/2003 8:17:40 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Bush Sr. invaded for oil too. Of course in that case he had a much better excuse You misunderstand the treachery that was involved in getting Saddam to destroy himself. As you are aware, Saddam was a client of the U.S. throughout the 1980s, as our proxy in U.S. corporate fight against the Iranian people. Saddam well understood his client relationship and when he felt abused by the theft of Iraq's oil by the al Sabahs (the Kuwaiti royal family) with the cooperation of, ta da, Halliburton with slant drilling into Iraq's southernmost oilfield, the Rumailia Field. Additionally, Kuwait was dumping the stolen oil onto the world market and caused the price of crude oil to fall to about $10/bbl. This was a great burden on Iraq's finances, which had been strained beyond the breaking point by the Iran-Iraq War which had been fought (to the delight of the realpolitik crowd in Washington) to a stalemate. Imposing vast cost on both Iran and Iraq, and strengthening the U.S. position in the region. On July 25, 1990, Saddam had a private audience with April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Saddam spoke of his concerns about the theft of Iraq's oil and the hardship of a low world price for oil. Glaspie told Saddam that the U.S. "had no opinion on Arab on Arab conflicts". Saddam interpreted this as a green light to redress his grievances with the al Sabahs. This opinion was further reinforced by similar language to Glaspie's "green light" wording from Margaret Tutwiler, at the UN and from a senior State Department spokesman, both of whom reiterated Glaspie's position of "hand's off" during the following week. Saddam had asked for permission to redress his grievances, had apparently received that permission, and when he acted, he was betrayed by George H.W. Bush. And the rest is history, as they say. Except to add that the Kurds and Shiites were remarkably naive, and didn't realize that betrayal was the hallmark of the Bush Middle East policy and they took the bait when Bush called for the Kurds and Shiites to rise up in rebellion in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Then Bush betrayed them as well. Is it any wonder that no one in the Middle East trusts America any longer?