On Thu Jul 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
> It still strikes me as very strange. According to people who ought to
> know, Bush offered Saddam Hussein the resolution of all prewar oil
> drilling disputes on Iraqi terms, plus a bunch of money in return for
> the peaceful Iraqi evacuation of Kuwait.
That doesn't seem to make any sense given the public record that Bush was offered the same deal but better -- withdrawal w/o the money and with drilling terms left to be negotiated -- and turned it down:
<quote>
Even after the destructive and brutal Iraqi invasion of Kuwait but before Operation Desert Storm, there was scope for some diplomatic action. The Russians intervened to tell Saddam that he would have to get out of Kuwait. Yevgeni Primakov, now the Russian prime minister, went to Baghdad and worked out a proposal which he took to President Bush: Saddam would evacuate Kuwait if America agreed to pull back its own forces and to hold a conference to adjudicate all the outstanding regional issues. Primakov was rebuffed in Washington.
</quote>
>From "A New Leaf on Iraq" by William Polk in the NYRB, Feb 18, 1999:
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19990218034F@p2
Polk is generally very diplomatic. This he states as an obvious fact. He's a mainstream Middle East scholar who taught at Harvard for 30 years. Can you ask your informant if he'd still stand by his comment and how he squares it with Primikov's rebuff?
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com