@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 00:01:45 -0700 Sender: LECLERC YVES <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: cj#254> re: Bush, Thatcher & Gulf Adventure Richard, you wrote: <<This analysis ignores the fact that the U.S. State Department responded with a "go-ahead" signal to Saddam, _prior_ to the invasion. Such signals are common, and typically the U.S. stands behind them (albeit covertly), as we've seen with Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Turkey's invasion of Iraq, and most recently with Croatia's invasion of Krajina. The signal was undoubtedly central to Iraq's decision to invade.>> I see no contradiction. According to the U.S. ambassador to Iraq (interview by the CBC a few months after the Gulf War) and to Gorbachev's aide whose name I forget (article in Time Magazine about the same time), the U.S. didn't believe that Saddam would take the whole of Kuwait. In fact, Saddam himself probably didn't expect to: he sent his troops in, and met with no resistance to speak of, so that within about half a day he was in Kuwait City with hardly any losses on either side -- see the Amnesty International report of (I think) 1993, according to which the "brutal" invasion caused at the most 2-3000 deaths, compared to the some 40,000 that had been claimed at the time by the "good guys"... and to the 200,000 from the "clean" U.S. retaliation that followed. So yes, the U.S. gave the go-ahead, but yet found itself in an unexpected situation -- which I think Thatcher was first to perceive as advantageous for implementing a "New World Order", a concept she sold to Bush after the fact. I'll admit some of my recollections of the sequence of events may be a bit fuzzy, and I'd really like to get the reaction of professional historians about this. Anyone out there? Yves Leclerc -- <•••@••.•••> Montreal, Quebec @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Editor's Note: Yves, I can accept that the public pronouncements you report above occurred. But do they in fact represent the candid unfolding of "great power" policy? My own view, as you know from the NWO article, is that the Gulf Adventure was one of a series, including Grenada and Panama. So to me, the Thatcher/Bush dialog is rather late in the game, and hardly determinative of the NWO military agenda, not to mention IMF, GATT, etc. Time Magazine and Ambassadorial pronouncements are propaganda channels, pure and simple, IMHO. As regards tracking the "media thread", perhaps the media coverage that I was exposed to in California was different than what you saw. In U.S. television, there was never any hesitancy about condemning Iraq. Even before the invasion, when Iraqi troops were concentrating, Iraq was being portrayed as an evil aggressor. There was no issue about "how much" of Kuwait might be invaded. Once the invasion occurred, Iraq had violated a sovereign state, and that was totally unacceptable. Period. (Quite a contrast, by the way, to how the above-mentioned Israeli, Turkish, and Croatian aggressions were characterized.) Thus U.S. public opinion was being prepared from the outset for retaliation. The campaign to build an international consensus, in which Britain and the USSR were crucial players, took a more subtle approach with different rhetoric and timing. Internal to the U.S. the media coverage was all about bringing the international community to its senses. Externally, as you report, the emphasis was different. But the PR effort to explain away the positive U.S. signal to Iraq I find ludicrous, one of the more fragile cover stories of our age. -rkm
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