http://web.archive.org/web/20011121005056/http:/ www.thestarsandstripes.com/arkin/secret/weekone.shtml
in the end, it looks like a lot of the analysis on this list gibes with arkin's. and it doesn't rely on suspect transcripts of what glaspie said, going at the policy tangle around iraq at the time.
especially tasty (and depressing) is the passing reference to the long-forgotten lavoro bank scandal.
i'll copy the text in here, since the web archive is known to be kind of flaky. it's also the first in a series he did for stars and stripes, which appears only to be available any more on the waybaack machine. it takes a little cruising and patience, btw.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/thestarsandstripes.com/*
j
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Week One: The 'Green Light' By William M. Arkin Special to The Stars and Stripes
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."
It is perhaps one of the most famous lines of the Persian Gulf War.
The venue was a July 25, 1990, meeting between U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and President Saddam Hussein.
In two years as ambassador to Iraq, it was her first private audience with Saddam. And it was her last.
A week later, on Aug. 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and to some, Glaspie's statement would symbolize appeasement in offering a "green light" to invade.
Glaspie's statement, and her "belief" that Iraq did not want to have a war, is cited as proof of ineptitude.
We now know that Glaspie presented exactly Washington's stance, and was, in fact, a minor player in a long-standing White House policy of support and accommodation for Iraq. Saddam Hussein may have been given a green light to invade, but April Glaspie can hardly be blamed.
More Oil Than You Think
Where to start?
On Oct. 3, 1989, after assuming a host of covert Reagan-era arrangements with Iraq that were intended to "balance" the Arab country against fundamentalist Iran, President George Bush signed National Security Directive 26 (NSD-26) "U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf." With regard to Iraq, the Top Secret directive stated: "The United States should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence."
Reconstruction of Iraq's economy after eight years of war with Iran, particularly in its oil sector, was seen as a way of securing "a U.S. foothold in a potentially large export market." Saddam's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons ambitions were recognized irritants, but the administration thought commercial incentives would be more attractive to Saddam than political ambitions.
By April 1990, when the Iraqi leader thrust himself into the public limelight, announcing that Iraq would "make the fire eat up half of Israel," the Bush administration had made quite an investment. The CIA reported that month that "U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil have jumped from about 80,000 barrels per day [b/d] in 1985-1987 to 675,000 b/d so far in 1990 -- about 24 percent of Baghdad's total oil exports and eight percent of new U.S. oil imports." Iraq had become America's number two trading partner in the Arab world, and was the largest importer of American-grown rice. The Department of Energy had even purchased Iraqi oil for use in the strategic petroleum reserve for a future war.
Yet there was also mounting congressional pressure to impose economic sanctions on Iraq because of its human rights record, its weapons of mass destruction programs and its increasingly hostile policy. Intelligence specialists wrote of the country's increasingly precarious financial position, and there were enormous financial improprieties in Iraqi dealings, leading the Agriculture Department to recommend a cut-off of Iraqi loans, as was mandated by law.
But the Bush White House would have none of it. In May, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft personally asked Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter to stop any public announcement of a suspension. Yeutter then overruled the Agriculture official administering the program.
Administration spokesmen and apologists would later argue that their Iraq policy had not contributed to the very capabilities American servicemen and women would soon be facing. It is an argument that can hardly be accepted. The Reagan and Bush administrations had authorized $5.08 billion in loan guarantees to Iraq between 1983 and 1990. Investigators later found that the Italian-owned Banco Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) issued another $4.5 billion in unauthorized loans, $1 billion of which were guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture. Between 1985 and 1990, the Commerce Department approved 771 licenses for dual-use technology exports to Iraq, of which 82 went directly to Iraqi military-related establishments. Fifteen times between 1983 and 1990, the U.S. government waived restrictions to allow items that appeared on the State Department's restricted "Munitions List" to be exported to Saddam. The United States might not have armed Saddam, but it freed up resources that effectively achieved the same goal.
Talking Points
As April Glaspie rushed to her meeting with Saddam on July 25, 1990 (she had gotten only two hours' notice), the July 18th "talking points" from Washington, now declassified, governed her discussions. "The United States takes no position on the substance of the bilateral issues concerning Iraq and Kuwait," it directed. The day before the snap meeting, in fact, Glaspie got yet another secret cable from the State Department. "The U.S. is concerned about the hostile implications of recent Iraq statements directed against Iraq's neighbors," it read. Yet it repeated the now standard "we take no position" line, merely imploring Iraq to be mindful of the fact that use of force was contrary to the United Nations charter.
Were threats against Iraq emanating from other quarters? On July 19, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was quoted publicly as saying that the U.S. defense commitment extended to Kuwait during the Iran-Iraq war was still valid. Later that day Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said that Cheney's remarks had been taken "with some degree of liberty." Five days later, when Secretary of the Navy Lawrence Garrett told a congressional committee that "our ships in the Persian Gulf were at a "heightened state of vigilance," his spokesman said that he had made a mistake.
The day before Glaspie's meeting, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutweiler said "we do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 30 that the United States was not obligated to come to the military aid of Kuwait if Iraqi forces crossed the border.
Did the U.S. military leadership think an Iraqi invasion likely? Conventional wisdom right to the 11th hour was that if the Iraqis moved south, they would perhaps take the Bubiyan and Warbah islands off the Iraqi coast, and possibly the southeastern sector of the Rumaylah oil fields, which extended into Kuwait.
Up to the very last minute, while analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and CIA argued that a full-scale invasion seemed imminent, U.S. military leaders didn't believe it. Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Gen. Colin Powell: "They're not going to invade. This is a shakedown."
On July 31, Chairman Powell chaired a meeting in the "tank," the Joint Staff's secure conference room, to discuss the situation in Iraq. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the region, had flown up from his Tampa headquarters to give his assessment of the situation. DIA hard-liners said there was little doubt that an attack into Kuwait was imminent. Schwarzkopf didn't agree. Like Kelly, he thought Saddam was bluffing, seeking to extort concessions from Kuwait. A senior Kuwaiti military official had told Schwarzkopf that they weren't even going to go on alert so as to not "play Saddam's game and give him an excuse to attack."
According to an Air Force oral history, "Heart of the Storm," when the meeting broke up, "The mood around the table was `Ho hum, thanks for the briefing, Norm. We'll try to attend your retirement next summer.' Seven thousand miles away in sand and darkness, Iraqi tankers were fueling for the push into Kuwait. When dawn broke, they would be rolling south."