AMERICA'S SECRET WAR
Saddam was 'quietly assured by the United States that it would have no objection to his claiming his prize - Kuwait'
by George Friedman
December 5, 2005
The Wisdom Fund
[Dr. George Friedman's firm Stratfor has been dubbed by Barron's as "The Shadow CIA." It has provided analysis to Fortune 500 companies, news outlets, and the U.S. government.]
The United States had no use for the Iraqi regime and had supported the Shah's Iran in a war against Iraq in the 1970s, ending in a peace that had not been favorable to Iraq. With the Iranian revolution, the Americans were looking for a lever to control Iran, . . .
The Carter administration wanted to motivate Saddam to fight, but he had little to gain simply by fighting Iran. What Saddam wanted was to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Absorbing Kuwait, which had historically been a part of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire until the British carved it our for their own interests, was a key goal, but so was dominating the region politically. He knew that if he defeated Iran, Iraq would be the dominant power in the region. He was also quietly assured by the United States that it would have no objection to his claiming his prize - Kuwait - once he defeated Iran. The assurances were very quiet and very deniable.
The United States then did everything it could to make sure that Iraq could never claim the prize, shifting its weight back and forth during the Iran-Iraq war, in classic balance-of-power style. The famous Iran-Contra affair engineered by Bill Casey was part of this strategy, with Americans delivering Hawk surface-to-air missiles and TOW antitank missiles to Iran in order to stave off an Iranian defeat - while also arranging for supplies to Iraq. Under the circumstances it was a clever move until better options emerged.
The Iran-Iraq war lasted nearly ten years and cost millions of lives. In the end, Iraq won - or, more precisely, was less exhausted than Iran. After some months of recovery, Saddam turned to collect his prize. In his famous meeting with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, just before the invasion, Saddam calmly explained his intention to invade Kuwait, and Glaspie, not informed by the State Department that the policy had changed, proceeded to give Saddam the reassurance of American support that had been the U.S. policy transmitted by ambassadors and back channels for a decade. . . .
What Glaspie didn't know. and what Glaspie hadn't been told, was that the United States had never expected Iraq to win and certainly was not prepared to let Saddam collect his war prize.
THE WISDOM FUND News & Views
MORE at http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/1205-SecretWar.html
---
A high point of the public relations campaign against Iraq, was the testimony of a Kuwaiti refugee, before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 15, 1990, who told of Iraqi troops removing over 300 babies from incubators in Kuwait City hospital, and dumping them on the floor to die. On January 6, 1992, John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, revealed that "Nayirah," the alleged refugee, was the daughter of Saud al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and that Hill and Knowlton, a large public relations firm, had helped prepare her testimony, which she had rehearsed before video cameras in the firm's Washington office.
Source: Enver Masud, "Deadly Deception, Pretexts for War," The Wisdom Fund, July 30, 2001
---
"When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf - to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait - part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
"Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
"But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border - just empty desert."
Source: Scott Peterson, "In War, Some Facts Less Factual," Christian Science Monitor, September 6, 2002
---
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
VISIT the 9/11 Special Interest Group Blog http://911sig.blogspot.com/
--------
ECOTERRA Intl. editor@ecoterra.net
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Saddam was 'quietly assured by the United States that it would have no objection to his claiming his prize - Kuwait'
by George Friedman
December 5, 2005
The Wisdom Fund
[Dr. George Friedman's firm Stratfor has been dubbed by Barron's as "The Shadow CIA." It has provided analysis to Fortune 500 companies, news outlets, and the U.S. government.]
The United States had no use for the Iraqi regime and had supported the Shah's Iran in a war against Iraq in the 1970s, ending in a peace that had not been favorable to Iraq. With the Iranian revolution, the Americans were looking for a lever to control Iran, . . .
The Carter administration wanted to motivate Saddam to fight, but he had little to gain simply by fighting Iran. What Saddam wanted was to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Absorbing Kuwait, which had historically been a part of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire until the British carved it our for their own interests, was a key goal, but so was dominating the region politically. He knew that if he defeated Iran, Iraq would be the dominant power in the region. He was also quietly assured by the United States that it would have no objection to his claiming his prize - Kuwait - once he defeated Iran. The assurances were very quiet and very deniable.
The United States then did everything it could to make sure that Iraq could never claim the prize, shifting its weight back and forth during the Iran-Iraq war, in classic balance-of-power style. The famous Iran-Contra affair engineered by Bill Casey was part of this strategy, with Americans delivering Hawk surface-to-air missiles and TOW antitank missiles to Iran in order to stave off an Iranian defeat - while also arranging for supplies to Iraq. Under the circumstances it was a clever move until better options emerged.
The Iran-Iraq war lasted nearly ten years and cost millions of lives. In the end, Iraq won - or, more precisely, was less exhausted than Iran. After some months of recovery, Saddam turned to collect his prize. In his famous meeting with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, just before the invasion, Saddam calmly explained his intention to invade Kuwait, and Glaspie, not informed by the State Department that the policy had changed, proceeded to give Saddam the reassurance of American support that had been the U.S. policy transmitted by ambassadors and back channels for a decade. . . .
What Glaspie didn't know. and what Glaspie hadn't been told, was that the United States had never expected Iraq to win and certainly was not prepared to let Saddam collect his war prize.
THE WISDOM FUND News & Views
MORE at http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/1205-SecretWar.html
---
A high point of the public relations campaign against Iraq, was the testimony of a Kuwaiti refugee, before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 15, 1990, who told of Iraqi troops removing over 300 babies from incubators in Kuwait City hospital, and dumping them on the floor to die. On January 6, 1992, John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, revealed that "Nayirah," the alleged refugee, was the daughter of Saud al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and that Hill and Knowlton, a large public relations firm, had helped prepare her testimony, which she had rehearsed before video cameras in the firm's Washington office.
Source: Enver Masud, "Deadly Deception, Pretexts for War," The Wisdom Fund, July 30, 2001
---
"When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf - to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait - part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
"Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
"But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border - just empty desert."
Source: Scott Peterson, "In War, Some Facts Less Factual," Christian Science Monitor, September 6, 2002
---
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
VISIT the 9/11 Special Interest Group Blog http://911sig.blogspot.com/
--------
ECOTERRA Intl. editor@ecoterra.net
----------------------
Do you want to read or distribute a message in another language?
(Don't use these services for confidential texts - they are read and stored!)
Just go to the free translation sites: Best: Google Language Tools
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en or Altavista Babelfish
http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn or Freetranslator
http://www.freetranslation.com/or http://www.systransoft.com/
(all - except google - for text of less than 150 words only) or go to
http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html
or http://www.t-mail.com/t-text.shtml or check for Arabic and African
automated translators at http://www.bisharat.net/Trans/ and have
the translation of the text done free of charge. Look for other
tools at http://www.omniglot.com/links/translation.htm.
But, please, still keep the reference to the source and note in your
distribution that the text is only an automated translation, while the
original can be obtained from ECOTERRA. Thank you!
Don't use these services for confidential texts - they are read and stored!
----------------------
ECOTERRA Intl. nodes
Cairns * Calgary * Cassel * Cebu * Curitiba
* London * Nairobi * Roma * Paris * Wien
ECOTERRA - FIRST PEOPLES & NATURE FIRST !
FREEDOM & FUTURE for PEOPLE & NATURE
24 h EMERGENCY RESPONSE: +254-733-633-000
http://www.ecoterra.org.uk
http://www.ecoterra.net
http://www.ecoterra.de
http://www.ecoterra.info
Marine Group: http://www.ecop.info
Eco_Alert · http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Eco_Alert/
green is good - environmentalism is not political - it is sanity !
Please feel welcome to subscribe to any or all of our free
mailing lists and see important updates, e-mail security issues as
well as copyright rules at http://www.ecoterra.org.uk/footer.htm !
© = Copyright is © ECOTERRA Intl. 2005 - all rights reserved
otherwise CL=CopyLeft or N©=Anti-Copyright
! CAVEAT LECTOR !
*** NOTICE: This email and any files or attachments transmitted
with it may be confidential and/or privileged. The information is
intended solely for the use of the individual, entity, group or list to
whom it is addressed, except if earmarked for widest distribution.
Please see also our disclaimer http://www.ecoterra.org.uk/sites/disclaimer-site.htm
Unless other sources are quoted or other indications given:
All contents is published under the Open Content License, if nothing else is
mentioned, but some rights are reserved under the Creative Commons Licence.
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