| On August 2, 1990, Saddam's forces cross the border into Kuwait triggering the largest international crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A coalition force led by the US, assembles and launches a massive air assault against Iraq starting the largest ground assault ever since World War Two in the name of liberating Kuwait. On February 28, 1991, having fulfilled its mission, the international coalition abruptly stops the war against Iraq. The last Iraqi troops are evicted from Kuwait or taken prisoners. Victory is total. However, after forcing Saddam out of Kuwait, a decade after it was imposed, the embargo against Iraq is still in place. To understand why this embargo still stands and why the Gulf war happened in the first place, it is necessary to look at the history of Western involvement in the Middle East. In the 1920's, European and American oil companies discover and begin to exploit the first oil fields in the Middle East. The potential of these fields have become particularly critical to oil poor Western Europe. The profit margins are huge. While the cost to local regimes is minimal, the price of oil at the well is almost the same as mineral water. World War Two changes this equation. To spite their victory over Nazi Germany both France and England are gravely debilitated and begin losing their grip over their former colonies. In the Middle East, new leaders come to power removing monarchies no longer protected by the former colonial forces and swept away by popular revolutions. However, the British and French role in the Middle East is now being taken over by the big winner of the war, the United States of America. To spite its own oil resources, the US comes to realize the strategic importance of the Middle East oil, oil that would aid in containing the Soviet Union, in rebuilding Western Europe, and in bolstering the American industrial boom. But Washington hopes to maintain the inexpensive Middle East oil bonanza of before WW2. The new Middle East regimes think otherwise and when they seek to retake control of their own national wealth it strikes a chord of panic in Washington, London and Paris. It is war against Egypt when Nasser seizes the Suez Canal. Iran nationalizes her oil fields and kicks the British oil companies out. The leadership in Iran is subsequently ousted by a CIA orchestrated coup that puts the Shah back in command. Iraq takes over and nationalizes her oil fields and the West cries communism. Saddam came to power in 1968. His coup came as a result of an oil deal between a French Company and Iraq. This contract upset the west in general and the Americans in particular sought to encourage a coup in Iraq at that time. The US has always had kind of a love hate relationship with Saddam Hussein, which a lot of people in the US are not aware of. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the CIA actually supported Saddam and his Bath party in the coup that brought him to power. In spite of his already well-known ruthlessness, Saddam remained the good guy of the West until 1972. It was in this year that OPEC agrees to raise the price of the barrel of oil from $3 to $22. Iraq follows suit and nationalizes its oil fields. Saddam is then viewed unreliable by Washington and as a result branded a terrorist leader. The US then shifts all of its support to the long standing ally in the region, the Shah of Iran. For 25 years, since 1953, the Shah was the US surrogate in the Middle East. The US sold him 22 Billion in arms from 1972 through 1976. The hope of control in the Middle East by the West fades in 1979 when the Shah is overthrown by an anti Western fundamentalist leader, Ayatullah Khomeini. By then Saddam again becomes a viable card in Washington's hand. He becomes the actual president of Iraq after 11 years of being its Vice President and then perpetrates a sweeping purge of his opponents and attacks Iran without provocation or apparent reason. The Stockholm Peace Research Institute found that 52 different countries supplied weapons to Iran or Iraq and 29 countries supplied both sides. The very same countries that were saying how horrible the war was, were using the war to stimulate their arms industries and test some of their new weapons designs. There was an arms embargo in effect on both Iran and Iraq when secretly the US was arming both sides of the conflict. Saddam's ambition however was to develop Iraq's own nonconventional WMD's. An inquiry conducted by the US congress in 1992, reveals that the American contribution to this effort is quite significant as was fully monitored by the CIA. The US State Department reported that as early as the late 1970's the US was detailing the Iraq mass destruction programs and its repetitive use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish opponents. Voices started being heard about the wisdom of the US giving Iraq huge credits intended for purchasing US agricultural goods but used instead to by helicopters, unreasonable amounts of pesticides, germs and advance arms making technologies. The US State Department and the White House under Presidents' Reagan and then Bush, systematically quell all the inquiry attempts from congress and the Treasury Department. From massive arms purchases to the development of costly military research programs, Saddam Hussein had ruined formerly rich Iraq. By the end of his war against Iran in 1988, the country is in the red for 40 Billion dollars. It is precisely at this time, starting in 1988, when Iraq is most desperate to maximize its oil income that yet another crises begins unfolding. OPEC keeps the price of oil stable by limiting how much oil each OPEC member country can produce. In 1989, after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait suddenly exceeds its quotas by 20 percent, driving the price of oil down on the world market. As a result of Kuwait's production hike, Iraq lost almost a third of its oil income at a time when Iraq was desperate for money. Saddam felt that Kuwait was stabbing him in the back. Welcomed by the West, this move by Kuwait hurts both Iraq's economy and pride because Kuwait use to be part of their country before it was carved off by the British in 1928. Over the following months, tension escalates to the point of Saddam Hussein publicly threatening Kuwait. Given that Kuwait remains one of the primary oil suppliers to the west, the official response of the US State Department to Saddam's saber rattling is rather surprising. The US publicly claims that there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait. Why would the US claim they had no defense agreements with Kuwait? On August 2, 1990, convinced the US Government would not interfere, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. While US officials express shock and surprise, the Pentagon is ready for action--having rehearsed this very situation for several months prior to Iraq's attack on Kuwait. Norman Schwarzkopf claims that the US military happen to be conducting a Command Post Exercises in the Gulf Region at the same time the crises developed in the Gulf. But US Marine officers had been telling their soldiers they had known about the invasion of Kuwait for two years. Hardly a few hours after Saddam's invasion, all Iraqi assets in the US are frozen and the US Navy starts enforcing a blockade of the Iraqi coast even before the UN gets a chance to convene. A couple of days later, delegations from the US Department of State and Defense try to convince the Saudi government that the Iraqi's are indeed threatening their boarders. The official press release mention sharing the Saudi satellite picture evidence of the Iraqi build up at the Saudi border. The Defense Department never made public any photographs that proved their point. In 1991, the St. Petersburg Times along with ABC runs a story based on commercial satellite pictures that happen to have been taken over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at the time of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The airport in the Kuwaiti capital appeared to have been abandoned which it wouldn't be, not if you were trying to supply 250,000 troops with food, equipment and supplies. There were no tank tracks in the desert sand, and they would not have worn away because satellite photos are still picking up images of sand tracks in the desert of Northern Africa that were left in World War Two. If indeed the US government misled the Saudis about the Iraqis threatening their borders, what was the purpose? Ever since World War Two, the US Administration had been making countless efforts to convince the Saudi's to allow the largely Christian US troops into the holy land of Mecca--supposedly to protect Saudi Arabia but mainly to secure its vast oil fields. Ever since OPEC raised the price of oil in the early 1970's, this concern has become even more acute which is epitomized by Henry Kissenger's famous statement, "Oil is too important to be left to the Arabs." In 1990, the Bush Administration was trying to convince the Saudi's that this threat from Iraq was real because the US or its allies couldn't go in there without an invitation from the Saudis. The Saudi's had to feel threatened in order for the allies to come in for protection. On August 2, 1990, the Saudi government officially accepts the insisting protection offer from Washington. The very next day the US military steamroller starts flying in without even notifying congress. Within a few months, over 500,000 American troops will be deployed in Saudi Arabia. After persuading the Saudis, the US Government now has to convince the American public and the world, that the threat is real and that it justifies a gigantic US military buildup in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the pressure is on to find a simplistic and peaceful solution to the crises. War is already in the minds of others. The UN Secretary General flies to Bagdad and meets with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. He fails to convince him that the International threat will be real if he chooses to remain in Kuwait. His failure however doesn't meet with any despair and frustration upon his return to New York. The Americans expressed no willingness to arrive at a diplomatic solution. At the time of the US effort to get council approval to go to war, Yemen voted against the use of force as a solution. No sooner did the Ambassador put down his hand from the vote, then a US Representative stood at his side saying, "That will be the most expensive No vote you ever cast. Three days later the US cut its entire aid budget to Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. On November 29, 1990, driven by the US Delegation, the UN Secretary Council passes a war resolution with a deadline set for January 15th. There would be no turning back at this point. On January 17, 1991, at 3 a.m., Iraq time, hell brakes loose on Bagdad. The formidable firepower of the coalition amassed primarily by the United States over the past five months reveals its awesome might. Televisions worldwide start showing images of a supposedly fool proof, flight precision campaign of so-called surgical bombing said to hit nothing but Iraqi military targets. In the Gulf War, the military decided to keep the press out, so the press was kept out. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark claims: "When the US typically reports of bombing with pin point accuracy, nothing could be further from the truth. You have 500 tons of bombs which is equivalent to 7 1/2 Hiroshima's dropped in 42 days. The bombing probably killed 150,000 maybe 200,000 people. The US deliberately planned the destruction of the economic support systems of the Iraqi population. Just take water: they knocked out reservoir dams, pumping stations for water pipelines and purification plants to purify the water for drinking without getting sick. On food, they systematically attacked the food chain from one end of the country to the other. They knocked out all electric power within hours, they knocked out communication and repeatedly attacked generator stations and telephone exchange facilities, they knocked out transportation--they showed that you can destroy a country and deprive it of its central life support system without ever setting foot on it with cruise missiles and ariel bombardment." February 23, 1991, the coalition ground forces start rolling into Kuwait. The allied offensive goes fast and deep into Kuwait without encountering significant resistance. The Iraqi military is no where in sight and the troops still present in Kuwait are simply no match for the modern coalition forces. Many US troops claimed the Iraqi soldiers didn't even know how to fire their weapons and that many of their weapons were full of sand. |