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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nicholas Thompson who wrote (460280)	3/2/2009 12:57:26 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1578175

Saddam was encouraged indirectly by the mixed signals he got from the USA. This was reported by the liberal media but there is no evidence it was the motivating factor. While it is possible Saddam could have had some confusion over the remark ("we have no interest in your border disputes"), there is no way in hell he thought he received approval (tacit or otherwise) to proceed into Kuwait and then Saudi Arabia. He obviously knew what was at stake for us -- allowing Saddam control of the Saudi oilfields would never, ever have been considered by the United States. In fact, even had the Saudis not asked for our help, the decision had already been made that they were going to get it. While they made a bonafide request for us to protect them, had they not done so they would have received our protection whether they wanted it or not. They didn't know it but it simply wasn't their prerogative. The simple truth is Saddam thought he could get into Saudi Arabia before we could do anything about it and that ejecting him would not be practical for us. Obviously, he miscalculated.