To: epicure who wrote (139375 ) 7/8/2004 3:06:14 PM From: carranza2 Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500 Good grief, X, wake up. You cited this from the article I posted: Glaspie can only be criticised for not giving such a warning if it can be established that she knew that Saddam was planning an invasion. There is nothing in the transcripts to suggest this. " How can there be some grand conspiracy to give Saddam the green light to go into Kuwait when no one knew at the time that he was planning an invasion? How in Heaven's name do you get past that hurdle? And why do you insist on ignoring the gist of the article?When these purported transcripts were made public, Glaspie was accused of having given approval for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which took place on August 2, 1990. The transcript, however, does not show any explicit statement of approval of, acceptance of, or foreknowledge of the invasion. Indeed Glaspie's opening question ("Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?") would suggest that Glaspie (and presumably therefore also the State Department) did not know the purpose of the troop concentrations and was concerned about them. The transcript also shows clearly that when Glaspie expressed the hope that the Iraq-Kuwait dispute would be "solved quickly," she meant "solved by diplomatic means." The references to solving this problem "using any suitable methods via Klibi or via Mubarak" make this clear. Nothing Glaspie says in the published versions of the transcript can be fairly interpreted as implying U.S. approval of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As I said before, feel free to construct your own reality. Folklore matters a lot more around here than fact.