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I've begun looking into the history of iraq again and would like to post some information that may be useful to keep in mind when hearing "humanitarian" justification attempts for bombing the people of the region:
Another take:
CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF;
The Oilfield Lying Below the Iraq-Kuwait Dispute
By THOMAS C. HAYES
Published: September 3, 1990
Percentages Set by Formula
Oil formations frequently run be neath political boundaries, whether they involve unfriendly leaseholders in West Texas or neighboring Arab states, and procedures have existed for years to settle disputes that arise. Typically, participants in the same field share both production costs and revenues, using a formula that sets percentages of ownership.
But Iraq refused to negotiate with Kuwait on such an agreement. So Ku wait produced oil from Rumaila with out any agreement, and then adopted a policy of producing far more oil than it was allowed under the quota system of the Organization of Petroleum Export ing Countries. That policy became an other sticking point in relations with Iraq, which contended that the over production depressed oil prices and revenues for all OPEC members.
Iraq had produced oil from the field before it went to war with Iran. Of a total of 615 wells in Iraq, 225 were in the Rumaila field, according to 1986 fig ures, the latest available, from John S. Herold Inc., an oil industry consulting firm in Greenwich, Conn.
Field Mined During War
But during the Iran war Iraq mined its giant share of the Rumaila field to keep it from falling into Iranian hands, Western political experts say. Kuwait stepped up its total oil production, cap turing some of Iraq's customers and pumping millions of barrels from the Rumaila field. After the war with Iran ended in a cease-fire in 1988, Iraq re sumed drilling in Rumaila.
Iraq's dispute with Kuwait, has its roots in Britain's decision in 1899 to es tablish Kuwait as a British protector ate. The Kuwait royal family had ruled the area since 1756, but Iraq still con sidered it part of its southern province, The dispute flared again more than 30 years ago, shortly after oil was dis covered in 1953 in Iraqi territory in the huge Rumaila reservoir. After the Arab League of States established the Kuwait-Iraq border two miles north of the southern tip of the oilfield, Kuwait erected oil rigs on its own territory and drilled into the rich pool below. Kuwait has never disclosed how much Rumaila oil it has pumped. $2.4 Billion Claim by Iraq But President Saddam Hussein says Kuwait owes Iraq $2.4 billion for oil taken from the field. In addition to as serting that Kuwait owed Iraq for the oil it had produced, Mr. Hussein told an emergency meeting of the Arab League in May that excessive supplies of Kuwaiti oil in the world market in the last two years had undermined OPEC production quotas and de pressed world oil prices. He said that action cost Iraq $14 billion a year, or far more than Kuwait had lent Iraq during Iraq's confrontation with Iran.
His remarks to the Arab League's closed session were reported by the Middle East Economic Survey in an issue that reached American experts after the invasion of Kuwait.
Sounding the alarm over Iraq's mounting grievances against Kuwait, Mr. Hussein told the Arab League that ''we cannot tolerate this type of eco nomic warfare,'' and added, ''We have reached a state of affairs where we cannot take the pressure.''
Assertions Rejected
In a memorandum to the Arab League dated July 19, Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah, the Foreign Minister of Kuwait, rejected Mr. Hussein's as sertions about Kuwait's production from the Rumaila reserves. ''Kuwait has produced oil from wells within its territory south of the Arab League line and far enough away from the interna tional borders to conform with interna tional standards,'' he wrote in the memo.
The Kuwaiti royal family did not re spond to a request made Friday to a spokesman in Taif, Saudi Arabia, where the family is in exile, for com ment on Kuwait's production at the Rumaila field.
Kuwait's overall production in 1989, an average of 1.8 million barrels a day, exceeded its OPEC quota by 700,000 barrels. The Kuwaiti Government's hope was to force Mr. Hussein to the bargaining table, and then extract from him a border truce that included Rumaila drilling rights, as well as a non-aggression pact. Instead, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and drove its ruling family into exile.
'Economic Warfare'
Henry M. Schuler, director of the energy security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that, from the Iraqi viewpoint, the Kuwait Government was ''acting aggressively - it was eco nomic warfare.''
''Whether he's Hitler or not, he has some reason on his side,'' Mr. Schuler said of President Hussein. He added that American officials needed to ap preciate the economic and psychologi cal significance the Rumaila field holds for the Iraqis and why Kuwait's exploi tation of Rumaila, in addition to its high oil output in the 1980's, was an afront to the Iraqis.
''It's not just the emotional man in the street in the Arab world who finds the Iraq case appealing,'' he said. ''So do many of those who are thinking, in telligent people. If the Iraqi people feel they are the victims of aggression, and that their legitimate claims are being stifled now by American intervention, they will hang in there a lot longer than if that were not the case.''
Some Middle East experts dismiss Iraq's complaints about Kuwait's ac tivities in the Rumaila field. They say Mr. Hussein has voiced these and other charges to justify a long-held desire to plunder Kuwait's financial wealth and give his nearly landlocked country con trol of more than 200 miles of Persian Gulf coastline.
'Only a Smokescreen'
''The issue of oil taken from the Rumaila field is only a smokescreen to disguise Iraq's more ambitious inten tions,'' said Marvin Zonis, a professor of political economy at the University of Chicago's Graduate Business School. ''The Iraqis will claim anything to jus tify the incorporation of Kuwait.''
Some Iraqi officials have accused Kuwait in the past of using advanced drilling techniques developed by Amer ican oilfield specialists to siphon oil from the Rumaila field, a charge that American drillers deny, noting that the oil flows easily from the Rumaila field without any need for these techniques.
The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, with headquarters in London, acquired American drilling expertise when it bought the Santa Fe International Cor poration in 1981 for $2.4 billion. Santa Fe, based in Alhambra, Calif., has separate divisions that specialize in oil field drilling and rig operations, pri marily in offshore areas around the world, as well as in exploration and production, mostly in the Gulf of Mexi co, Texas and Louisiana.
Six American Workers
John J. Mika, Santa Fe's vice presi dent of administration, said six Santa Fe employees, all Americans, were among the oil workers captured by Iraqi troops in the early moments of the Aug. 2 invasion. All of the men were believed taken to Baghdad, he added.
The Santa Fe employees worked on several rigs ''immediately adjacent'' to the Iraqi border, Mr. Mika said. He added that he was unaware of any well that might have utilized the ''slant'' drilling technique along the Iraqi border.
W. C. Goins, senior vice president of OGE Drilling Inc., a Houston company that provided oilfield supervisors and workers for Kuwait in the same area, said he was ''positive'' all of the wells his employees drilled and operated ran vertically down to the Rumaila pay zone. ''That field crosses the border in north Kuwait,'' he added. ''Iraqis were drilling on one side, and Kuwaitis on the other side.''
He said that Iraqi border guards would come over to the Kuwaiti oil wells occasionally and shared the rig workers' lunches - but under Kuwaiti law the workers were not allowed to drink the beer that the Iraqis brought with them, to the Iraqis' delight.
Now those lunches are a thing of the past. Of the 18 Americans employed by OGE in Kuwait, six have been missing since the invasion. At least two were ''taken to Baghdad right away,'' Mr. Goins said.
Map: Iraq and Kuwait indicating the Rumaila oil field (The New York Times)
Another take:
After the First World War in 1921 Sir Percy Cox of the British Colonial Office drew new borders between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, establishing Kuwait as a small kingdom that took away most of Iraq's coastline. The rich oil deposits in the region were exploited and controlled by seven oil companies from England, France, and the United States until Iran's Mossadegh government nationalized their oil in 1951, taking it from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum). Western nations imposed sanctions on Iran until 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh. Then General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. helped Shah Reza Pahlevi set up the oppressive SAVAK state police. The Hashemite monarchy in Iraq was overthrown in 1958 by a nationalist revolution led by Abdel Karim Kassem, and two years later the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded to counter the western oil monopolies. In 1963 a CIA-backed coup killed Kassem and thousands of his supporters.
Five years later the secular Ba'ath Party gained power in Iraq, and they nationalized Iraq's oil in 1972. In May of that year President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Shah of Iran began instigating the Kurds in northern Iraq to rebel by giving them weapons. When Iraq agreed to share the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway with Iran in 1975, the Shah stopped supporting the Kurds. The Shah was overthrown by the Iranian revolution in February 1979. Saddam Hussein replaced al-Bakr as president of Iraq in June, After the Americans in the Tehran embassy were taken hostage by the Iranian radicals in November, US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski began urging Iraq to attack Iran to take back the waterway. A year later Iraq's Saddam Hussein, guided by US intelligence, went to war against Iran, a war that would last eight years and kill about a million people. Weaker Iraq was supported in this war effort at first by the Soviet empire, Arab states including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and then by the western powers Britain, France, West Germany, and the United States, which provided satellite and AWACS intelligence. Egypt, which was receiving $2 billion per year in US aid, sent Iraq troops, tanks, and heavy artillery. Another US aid recipient, Turkey, helped Iraq by fighting its Kurdish rebels. Saudi Arabia provided money, and Kuwait alone loaned Iraq $30 billion.
The US sold arms worth $20 billion to Gulf states, and the Reagan administration illegally allowed Saudi Arabia to transfer weapons to Iraq. In 1972 the US had declared Iraq a nation that supports terrorism, but the Reagan regime took Iraq off that list. How the White House illegally armed Iraq is explained in detail by investigative reporter Alan Friedman in Spider's Web. In December 1983 President Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to restore diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein's government and to offer US loan guarantees to Iraq. The next spring the Export-Import Bank sent Iraq $500 million. The US also became Iraq's major trading partner by increasing its purchases of Iraqi oil. Vice President Bush, the State Department, and the CIA urged the Export-Import Bank to finance US exports to Iraq. The Atlanta branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro arranged for $5.5 billion in fraudulent loans that were guaranteed by the Commodity Credit Corporation. In 1986 a CIA team was sent to Baghdad as military advisors. Meanwhile Oliver North had been secretly shipping arms to Iran until this illegal trade was exposed in late 1986. The next year the US helped Iraq by protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers. In the late 1980s CIA fronts in Saudi Arabia and Chile sent 73 weapons transactions to Baghdad that included weapons-grade anthrax and equipment to repair rockets.
The Iraq-Iran War ended with a cease-fire on August 7, 1988, and the next day Kuwait drastically increased its oil production, breaking OPEC agreements and driving the price from $21 a barrel down to $11. this would cost Iraq $14 billion a year. While Iraq had been preoccupied fighting Iran, Kuwait had moved the border to the north and, using slant-drilling technology supplied by the US, was pumping oil from Iraq's Rumaila oil field. Iraq needed peace to rebuild and pay its $80 billion war debt, but it was being economically squeezed; Iraq's inflation was at 40% as the dinar sank. During an Arab summit meeting at Amman in February 1990 Saddam Hussein asked the US to withdraw from the Gulf and alerted others that the US wanted to dominate the Gulf region and fix oil prices. The next month Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) refused to follow OPEC production limits. Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power complex in 1981, and in April 1990 Saddam Hussein proposed that the Middle East become a nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons-free zone. In May, Saddam Hussein complained of economic warfare, and on July 17 he publicly accused Kuwait and the US of conspiring to destroy Iraq's economy. He warned them, and the next day Iraqi troops moved to the Kuwaiti border.
Only after the Iraq-Iran War ended did the US complain that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons on the Kurds six months before. Yet the US had helped supply such weapons that also had been used against Iran. The US Senate voted to cancel technology and food sales to Iraq. In 1989 CENTCOM's war plan 1002 was revised to make Iraq the enemy instead of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War meant that the US was no longer deterred from being aggressive in this region. Early in 1990 the CENTCOM commander General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. told Congress that Middle Eastern oil is the West's lifeblood, and he recommended a permanent military presence in the region. He also conducted four war games directed at Iraq; some of these were based on an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. On July 25 the US announced more Gulf war exercises; but US ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that State Department policy was that the US had no position on Arab-Arab conflicts.
On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. President Bush immediately prohibited US trade with Iraq and froze $30 billion in Iraqi assets, making Iraq unable to pay its UN dues. The US insisted that Iraq's vote be taken away even though the US owed the UN $1.6 billion in unpaid dues at the time. The same day a US battle group of seven warships was dispatched, and the next day the United Nations Security Council condemned Iraq. Saddam Hussein told Jordan's King Hussein that he would withdraw if the Arab League did not condemn Iraq. King Hussein tried to persuade Egypt's Hosni Mubarak; but Egypt was pressured by the US and introduced the condemnation resolution. So instead of withdrawing, Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq. On August 6 the UN Security Council imposed international sanctions on Iraq, and the next day the US persuaded King Fahd to let the US military use territory in Saudi Arabia. The US claimed that Iraqi troops were near the Saudi border, but satellite photos later refuted this. On August 8 President Bush ordered 40,000 troops to defend Saudi Arabia. Four days later Saddam Hussein offered to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel would pull out of the occupied territories. Then he made another offer without linking it to Israel, but the US rejected these. Saddam Hussein even offered to debate President Bush and Prime Minister Thatcher on television. In September embargoed Iraq began rationing food supplies. Chomsky considered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait roughly comparable to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978 or 1982 and the US invasion of Panama in 1989.
In the United States the media began demonizing Saddam Hussein, and Secretary of State James Baker even argued that the war was necessary to provide jobs for the sagging economy. When a poll showed that Americans would support an invasion to prevent Iraq from getting nuclear weapons, that argument was used even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated that Iraq was at least three years away from having even one atomic bomb. A girl, who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, testified before a Congressional committee that Iraqi soldiers had taken babies from incubators, but this was later exposed as a hoax devised by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. By October, Bush had massed 400,000 US troops in the region, and this increased to 573,000 before the war began. President Bush refused to negotiate except to give Iraq an ultimatum to withdraw by January 15, 1991, the UN deadline. The United States used bribery and threats to get the United Nations Security Council to give it authorization for the war. Ethiopia, Zaire, and Colombia got new aid. China got a loan from the World Bank and better diplomatic relations. After its vote, the Soviet Union was loaned $4 billion by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Egypt altogether had $14 billion of debt canceled. Cuba and Yemen were punished for not voting in favor. The UN allowed the US and its allies to act without any limitation, and the US never even reported what it did. Essentially the UN had relinquished its authority to the US.
On January 16 Bush ordered General Schwarzkopf to begin the attack. Iraq was immediately hit with thousands of missiles and bombs that destroyed 85% of its power and vital services within two days. This attack on the civilian infrastructure that destroyed Iraq's energy, sewage, and water systems has been considered a form of biological warfare because of the diseases caused. This was probably the most one-sided war in history, and it is more accurate to call it a massacre or genocide. Iraq had between 125,000 and 150,000 soldiers killed, while the US lost only 148 killed in combat, 37 of them by "friendly fire." In six weeks the US flew 109,000 sorties over Kuwait and Iraq. Although the purpose was supposed to be to drive the Iraqi soldiers out of Kuwait, 88,500 tons of explosives were dropped on Iraq; only 6,520 tons were the precision-guided "smart bombs," which were so well publicized.
On February 13 a US bomb killed 1,500 civilians in a Baghdad bomb shelter, and two days later President Bush urged the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On February 21 Soviet diplomats announced that Iraq had agreed to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait. The US gave them two days to do so before starting the ground attack. On February 26 as Iraqi troops tried to retreat or surrender along the Basra road, thousands were slaughtered during the "turkey shoot" on the "highway of death." Two days later Iraq and the US agreed on a cease-fire; but two days after that, thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed in another battle that did not kill a single American.
Ramsey Clark estimated that the bombing killed at least 25,000 Iraqi civilians directly and another 25,000 indirectly. American bombing hit 28 hospitals, 52 community clinics, and 676 schools, completely destroying 38 schools. Civilian vehicles on highways were strafed. The Pentagon admitted that civilian targets were attacked to demoralize the people and make the sanctions more effective. Modern Iraq was reduced to a pre-industrial condition as sewage and sanitation systems were destroyed; power was scarce, and most communications systems could not operate. The Iraqi people were held hostage as the US and its allies hoped that Saddam Hussein would be overthrown, causing tens of thousands to die of starvation and disease. After President Bush had repeatedly urged the southern Shi'is and northern Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein, he let them be slaughtered by the ruthless dictator, further weakening the country.
The embargo imposed to get Iraq to leave Kuwait was not lifted, and continuing sanctions prevented recovery. Oil-exporting Iraq had been importing 70% of its food.
With its assets frozen it had little revenue to purchase food. In June 1992 the US even bombed grain and wheat fields near Mosul in northern Iraq. The United States dominated the UN committee that severely restricted Iraq's importation of food and medicine. These conditions caused several thousand Iraqis, many of them children, to die each month and would continue for at least a dozen years. The sanctions were not lifted because Iraq was expected to pay at least $70 billion in reparations despite its previous debt and ruined country. The cost of rebuilding Iraq was estimated at $200 billion. The United Nations offered to let Iraq sell $1.6 billion worth of oil each six months; but 30% of this was to go for reparations and 5% for weapons destruction and border decisions, leaving Iraq with $1.04 billion over six months for food and medicine even though that would only cover food alone for four months. Iraq considered the offer so unfair that they declined. The UN committee gave most of the disputed Ramaila oil field to Kuwait.
The US Congress estimated that the first Gulf War cost the US $61.1 billion; but the superpower had become a mercenary and was reimbursed for $54 billion of this in cash and services. Kuwait contributed $16 billion, Saudi Arabia $16 billion, Japan $10 billion, Germany more than $6 billion, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) $4 billion. Japan and Germany did not participate militarily in the coalition because of their treaties made at the end of World War II. The United Kingdom spent $4.1 billion.
The intensive bombing also caused an environmental disaster.
In August 1990 the Bush administration had signed a waiver to exempt the military operations from the National Environmental Protection Act. In December 1990 the United Nations passed a resolution to prohibit attacks on nuclear facilities; but Gen. Schwarzkopf announced that these were primary targets, and on January 23 General Colin Powell confirmed that Iraq's two nuclear reactors had been destroyed. A week later Schwarzkopf said that eighteen chemical, ten biological, and three nuclear plants had been attacked. The US and British aircraft launched some 50,000 rockets and missiles containing depleted uranium (DU), and the US forces fired a total of 944,000 rounds of the DU armor-piercing shells. The uranium-238 causes cancer and birth defects and will remain in those areas indefinitely. Iraq did spill and burn oil, but Saudi scientists estimated that 30% of the oil spilled was caused by the bombing. The oil spilled into the Gulf was estimated to be twenty times that of the Exxon Valdez spill, by far the worst in history. University of Toronto Peace Institute researchers have estimated that 30% of all environmental degradation in the world is caused by military activities.
Posted 11th May 2011 by PL OrG
http://hazzanalche.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-us-killed-saddam-why-us-want-to.html?m=1
IV.II The International Scene
Meanwhile in the Middle East, conflict was brewing between Iraq and Kuwait. The historical context of Iraq-Kuwait conflict lies in the fact that Kuwait was once a district of Iraq during Ottoman rule, before the British carved it off to form an independent state. This had never been accepted by Iraq as a legitimate division, and thus established a context of political tension between the two entities. Yet the main cause of Iraq-Kuwait tension just prior to the Gulf War was far more contemporary, originating in the policies of Kuwait. Iraq was incensed at Kuwait for around three reasons: during the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait was apparently stealing $2.4 billion worth of oil from the Rumaila oil-field beneath the Iraq-Kuwait border; Kuwait had built various structures, including military structures, on Iraqi territory; after the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait had been colluding with the United Arab Emirates to exceed the production quotas fixed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), resulting in the reduction of oil prices.
Kuwait decided to drastically increase oil production on 8 August 1988, only one day after Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq. [13] Stable oil prices were essential to finance postwar reconstruction at this critical time. Yet Kuwait’s violation of OPEC agreements sent crude oil prices plummeting from $21 to $11 a barrel. Consequently Iraq was losing $14 billion a year. [14] This was only the beginning. In March 1989, Kuwait demanded a 50 percent increase in the OPEC quotas it was already flagrantly violating. Although OPEC rejected the demand in a June 1989 conference, Kuwait’s oil minister declared that Kuwait would not be bound by any quota at all. Kuwait then went on to double production to over a million barrels per day. [15]
Rumaila oil field located on Iraq-Kuwait border.
On top of this, as Pierre Salinger recorded, Kuwait “intended to extract more from the oil fields at Rumaila”, which lie on the disputed Iraq-Kuwait border. [16] During the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait had illegally extended its border northward, thus grabbing hold of 900 square miles of the Rumaila oil field. U.S.-supplied slant drilling technology allowed Kuwait to steal oil from the part of Rumaila that was indisputably within Iraq’s borders. Additionally, Kuwait’s rulers had lent Iraq $30 billion during its war with Iran, and was now demanding that Iraq recompense them. Yet Kuwait’s own behaviour towards Iraq had made this impossible.
The Iran-Iraq War had already cost Iraq over $80 billion. With oil prices plummeting thanks to Kuwaiti intransigence, it became impossible for Iraq to generate the necessary funds to recompense Kuwait. Iraq’s response between 1988 and 1990 was to endeavour to resolve these problems through diplomatic means. Yet all attempts at negotiation were rebuffed. [17] One senior U.S. official in Bush’s administration remarked: “Kuwait was overproducing, and when the Iraqis came and said, ‘Can’t you do something about it?’ the Kuwaitis said, ‘Sit on it.’ And they didn’t even say it nicely. They were nasty about it. They were stupid. They were arrogant. They were terrible.” [18]
Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Henry M. Schuler described these policies as “economic warfare” against Iraq. [19] Iraq complained that Kuwait’s policies were “tantamount to military aggression”. [20] By now Iraq was losing a billion dollars a year for each reduction of one dollar in the oil price. By 1990, these policies had decimated Iraq’s economy to such an extent that it was in worse condition than during its war with Iran, with inflation at 40 per cent and its currency plummeting. [21] Considering that Iraq had always espoused a historical claim to Kuwait, Saddam’s reaction to Kuwait’s policies is notable. Rather than immediately utilising the crisis as a pretext for acquiring Kuwaiti territory by force, Iraq appeared to be anxious to resolve the situation swiftly and peacefully. The late King Hussein of Jordan, a friend of the Western powers particularly admired by the United States and Israel, found Kuwait’s response perplexing. He testified to the San Francisco Chronicle:
Saddam Hussein
“He [Saddam Hussein] told me how anxious he was to ensure that the situation be resolved as soon as possible. So he initiated contact with the Kuwaitis... this didn’t work from the beginning. There were meetings but nothing happened... this was really puzzling. It was in the Kuwaitis’ interest to solve the problem. I know how there wasn’t a definite border, how there was a feeling that Kuwait was part of Iraq.” [22]
Indeed, after having fought for eight devastating years with Iran, war was the last thing on Saddam’s mind. A study by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, issued in early 1990, found that:
“Baghdad should not be expected to deliberately provoke military confrontations with anyone. Its interests are best served now and in the immediate future by peace ... Revenues from oil sales could put it in the front ranks of nations economically. A stable Middle East is conducive to selling oil; disruption has a long-range adverse effect on the oil market which would hurt Iraq ... Force is only likely if the Iraqis feel seriously threatened. It is our belief that Iraq is basically committed to a nonaggressive strategy, and that it will, over the course of the next few years, considerably reduce the size of its military. Economic conditions practically mandate such action ... There seems no doubt that Iraq would like to demobilize now that the war has ended.” [23]
Yet Kuwait’s provocative – and for Iraq devastating – behaviour, continued to generate increasing tension between the two countries. The international community ignored the growing tension. By July 1990, Kuwait had continued to ignore Iraq’s territorial and economic demands - including its OPEC-assigned quota. Subsequently, Iraq prepared for a military venture, amassing large numbers of troops along the border. A significant indication of the U.S. role in this can be discerned from a crucial discovery that occurred after the invasion, when the Iraqis found a confidential memorandum in a Kuwaiti intelligence file. The document (dated 22 November 1989) was a top secret report to the Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior by his Director General of State Security, informing him of a meeting with the Director of the CIA in Washington, William Webster. The document stated:
“We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country’s government to delineate our common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activities be coordinated at a high level.” [24]
In response, the CIA accused Iraq of forging the memo. Yet the Los Angeles Times disagrees with the CIA allegation, pointing out that: “The memo is not an obvious forgery, particularly since if Iraqi officials had written it themselves, they almost certainly would have made it far more damaging to US and Kuwaiti credibility.” [25] There is further evidence demonstrating the memo’s authenticity. When the Iraqi foreign minister confronted his Kuwaiti counterpart with the document at an Arab summit meeting in mid-August, his Kuwaiti colleague found it so sufficiently authentic – and indeed damaging – that he fainted. [26] And as noted by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney-General under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, “many experts affirm that it is genuine. It is telling evidence, documenting the economic warfare waged against Iraq by Kuwait and the United States”. [27]
There are further reasons to believe that the U.S. encouraged Kuwait not to come to a peaceful compromise with Iraq. Indeed, this is what has been asserted by the head of the Palestine Authority, Yasser Arafat, in relation to the events at an Arab summit in May. Arafat stated that the U.S. pressured Kuwait to refuse any deal when Saddam offered to negotiate a mutually acceptable border with Kuwait at the summit to resolve the issue. “The U.S. was encouraging Kuwait not to offer any compromise which meant that there could be no negotiated solution to avoid the Persian Gulf crisis.” [28]
Astute observers have noted that Kuwait’s behaviour was plainly irrational and could not have been conducted without external encouragement from a more powerful ally. Dr. Mussama al-Mubarak, a Professor in Political Science at Kuwait University, for instance, commented: “I don’t know what the [Kuwaiti] government was thinking, but it adopted an extremely hard line, which makes me think that the decisions were not Kuwait’s alone. It is my assumption that, as a matter of course, Kuwait would have consulted on such matters with Saudi Arabia and Britain, as well as the United States.” [29]
The testimony of King Hussein of Jordan, who had been an intermediary in negotiations between Iraq, Kuwait and other Arab states at that time, confirms the U.S. role. American investigative journalist Dr. Michael Emery, using King Hussein as his pre-eminent source, found that:
President George Bush Sr. conferring with Emir of Kuwait, 1990.
“Parties to the Arab negotiations say the Kuwaitis... had enthusiastically participated in a behind-the-scenes economic campaign inspired by Western intelligence agencies against Iraqi interests. The Kuwaities even went so far as to dump oil for less than the agreed upon OPEC price ... which undercut the oil revenues essential to cash hungry Baghdad. The evidence shows that President George Bush, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and other Arab leaders secretly cooperated on a number of occasions, beginning August 1988, to deny Saddam Hussein the economic help he demanded for the reconstruction of his nation.... However, Washington and London encouraged the Kuwaitis in their intransigent insistence.” [30]
As a consequence, Kuwait adopted a hard-line policy of no-compromise with Iraq, refusing to negotiate and intransigent in the face of Iraq’s threat of using military means to put a stop to Kuwait’s policies. According to senior Kuwaiti officials, this was because the U.S. had already promised to intervene in case of an Iraqi attack. The Kuwaiti foreign minister, who is also brother of the ruling Emir, declared just before the Iraqi invasion: “We are not going to respond to [Iraq]... if they don’t like it, let them occupy our territory... we are going to bring in the Americans.” According to King Hussein, the Kuwaiti Emir commanded his senior military officers to hold-off the Iraqis for 24 hours in the event of an invasion, by which time “American and foreign forces would land in Kuwait and expel them.” [31] Middle East expert Milton Viorst interviewed both U.S. and Kuwaiti officials for a report in the New Yorker. He was informed by Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Salem al-Sabah that General Schwarzkopf was a regular visitor to Kuwait after the Iran-Iraq War: “Schwarzkopf came here a few times and met with the Crown Prince and Minister of Defense. These became routine visits to discuss military cooperation, and by the time the crisis with Iraq began last year, we knew we could rely on the Americans.” [32]
Schwarzkopf’s role has been corroborated by other sources, particularly the testimony of a U.S. official in Kuwait who stated: “Schwarzkopf was here on visits before the war, maybe a few times a year. He was a political general, and that was unusual in itself. He kept a personally high profile and was on a first-name basis with all the ministers in Kuwait.” [33] The American-Kuwaiti plot was also confirmed after the Gulf War. The Kuwaiti Minister of Oil and Finance stated: “But we knew that the United States would not let us be overrun. I spent too much time in Washington to make that mistake, and received a constant stream of visitors here. The American policy was clear. Only Saddam didn’t understand it.” [34] As Francis Boyle thus notes, reviewing this sequence of events, the United Stated encouraged Kuwait in “violating OPEC oil production agreements to undercut the price of oil to debilitate Iraq’s economy”; “extracting excessive and illegal amounts of oil from pools it shared with Iraq”; “demanding immediate repayment of loans Kuwait had made to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War”; and “breaking off negotiations with Iraq over these disputes.” In doing so, the U.S. “intended to provoke Iraq into aggressive military actions against Kuwait that they knew could be used to justify U.S. military intervention into the Persian Gulf for the purpose of destroying Iraq and taking over Arab oil fields.” [35]
When Iraq began preparing for a military incursion into Kuwait, the U.S. did not publicise its official position of willingness to intervene on behalf of Kuwait. Instead the United States presented a green light to Saddam Hussein by consistently asserting a position of neutrality on the issue, contrary to its actual policy. On 25 July, while Saddam’s troops were amassed on Kuwait’s border in preparation to attack, after hearing the Iraqi dictator inform her that Kuwait’s borders were drawn in the colonial era April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, told Saddam:
“We studied history at school. They taught us to say freedom or death. I think you know well that we ... have our experience with the colonialists. We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait... [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.”....
http://www.voltairenet.org/article162816.html
