Sorry in advance that I am probably going to go over quota today. I also apologize in advance that I am in a very bad mood today due to illness, so I am going to be on the verge of flaming folks. I've got a fever, so you too can feel the heat, if you want to mess with me today, :-).
Frankly, I'm sorry I started this thread (which should probably have its own title by now). I have already said that I cannot produce any written sources to back up the claim that I made and that if anyone does not wish to believe it, they are free to do so. I am just telling you that the Saudi royal family believed it and believed it very seriously. They got on the horn to old George Bush real fast and he jumped like a puppet. After all, they were very responsive when he went crawling to beg for them to stop tanking the price of oil back in July, 1986, which they were doing to punish the OPEC cheaters, Iran and Iraq (who were fighting a little war that killed over a million people that Saddam HUSSEIN started), but which was also tanking Georgie Porgie's precious Texas real estate buddies and oil flunkies, like his son, as well.
It was because of the demands of the Saudi royal family that Georgie Porgie also held back from going all the way to Baghdad and taking out dear old Saddam HUSSEIN out as well. Don't want to upset that all crucial balance between Iran and Iraq after all, the two big threats to their royal highnesses..... Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Rkmickey at aol.com <Rkmickey at aol.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 9:17 PM Subject: Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>
>>>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, then under
>>>the control of a reactionary power in cahoots
>>>with the United States.
>
>and I asked:
>>If this was the case, why didn't Saddam keep going and take all of Saudi
>>Arabia? And anything else in the region he wanted (other than Iran)?There
>>was nothing in the way of the Iraqi army until 6 months after the initial
>>invasion of Kuwait.
>
>to which he answered:
>>>It was clear very early on that there was going to
>>>be a response from the US and others. He went
>>>into a defensive mode.
>
>But he didn't go "into a defensive mode" at all -- he left his army as
>sitting ducks in Kuwait and Iraq, they weren't able to defend anything at
>all. Had Saddam gone on and taken Saudi Arabia the US would have had no
land
>platform from which to launch a ground campaign against Saddam's army and
an
>air campaign alone based on carriers or distant land bases would have been
>useless.
>
>I don't think that "invading
>Kuwait was a progressive wonderful thing to do" and said nothing that could
>have led you to think that I felt that way. But you haven't said anything
>believable in support of your assertion about Saddam's original intent.
>
>K. Mickey
>
>