> > The real issue in Kuwait was not Kuwait
> >but Saudi Arabia. It is fairly clear that Saddam's
> >original plan was not to stop at the borders of
> >Kuwait but to keep going on down the coast
> >of the Persian Gulf to get the really big pools of
> >oil such as al-Ghawar in Saudi Arabia[....]
>
> How do you know that?
During the build up to the gulf war, there was a long article in the still good New Yorker which was a profile of King Hussein (if I remember correctly). In it, the writer reports that Hussein told him/her that when Iraq invaded Kuwait Hussein called Bush and told him that he was confident that Saddam would only occupy Kuwait for a few days and then withdraw. Hussein felt that the invasion was an expressoin of anger and a show of force toward Kuwait -- which had been provocative and belligerent toward Iraq in the preceding months (about Iraq's war debt to Kuwait, slant drilling accusations, etc). Hussein urged Bush to deal with the situation in whatever way he must -- but he told Bush to wait at least several days before issuing an ultimatum since such a thing would make it impossible for Saddam to withdraw. Bush issued his ultimatum a day later.
FWIW. I'm not prepared to defend this viewpoint (I'm crawling out from having several tons of tree land on my house last Thursday), I'm just inserting it into the mix.
Best,
Steve Rafferty