>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.....
I am quite ready to believe that the Saudi royals believed Saddam was going to invade Saudi Arabia -- hell, the Saudis would have been foolish not to take the threat of an invasion quite seriously in the circumstances-- and agree that Bush acted as he did at least in large part for the reasons you state. But what the Saudis believed at the time was not what I was questioning. Your earlier post that Saddam's original plan was indeed to invade Saudi Arabia but
>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.
It was immediately obvious that stopping at the Saudi border (without evacuating Kuwait) wouldnot deter the US response. But for several months there was nothing to stop the Iraqis from taking all the territory they wanted and taking Saudi Arabia would have prevented the US and others from launching an effective counterattack.And I surely don't understand what you mean by "a defensive mode" when Saddam left his forces exposed to devestation by the US-led coalition.
K.M.