Page 10 - 2011 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - January 2011

What Really Happened in the Gulf War What Really Happened in hasty offer in August of a final peace settlement the Shah and Iranian moderates, but then Gulf War to the Iranians and his evacuation of 1,000 collapsed under Khomeini's pressure. Powell square miles of Iranian territory -- the only reckoned that another defeat like that would Continued on from Page 9 spoils from Iraq's eight-year war with Iran -- destroy American credibility, and he didn't like confirmed that Saddam was clearing the decks the sound of a war with Iraq. "The American and focusing all of his energies on a fight with people," he argued, "don't want their young No one had predicted that Saddam would actually do something this reckless, but the U.S. Cheney enjoined Bush to lay out dying for buck-fifty-a gallon oil." Defend Saudi he had always been a reckless operator. Not American aims clearly: "we need an objective." Arabia, Powell reasoned, but concede Kuwait to Cheney wanted to fling Saddam out of Kuwait - Saddam. "The next few days Iraq will withdraw, having made up their minds how to handle an - at a minimum -- and perhaps march on to but Saddam will put his puppet in. Everyone in Iraqi invasion, the Bush administration fell to Baghdad to depose him. The U.S. had to the Arab world will be happy." Powell doubted, arguing. "Not all wars are avoidable," maintain a favorable balance in the Gulf. But as New York Senator Pat Moynihan witheringly Scowcroft reflected, "and this was perhaps one of them." Saddam's attack engaged America's Cheney also worried that the American people put it, that Americans would agree to put 500,000 U.S. troops in harm's way to rescue would not support a war to restore the superpower interest in oil as well as its reactionary al-Sabah dynasty, particularly when Kuwaiti princes holed up in Saudi Sheratons, determination to shape the new world order that such a war appeared to benefit Japan -- still the "sitting there in their white robes, drinking had emerged with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. export-driven bugbear of Americans in 1990 -- coffee and urging us on to war." Moynihan Scowcroft noted a basic divide between those who saw the Iraqi invasion as "the major crisis which imported far more Kuwaiti oil than the reminded President Bush that Kuwait was an U.S. Congress also wavered throughout, even a "accident of history," with artificial boundaries of our time" (Scowcroft and Cheney) and those staunch "national security Democrat" like drawn by "the bureaucrats of the colonial who viewed it as a manageable "crisis du jour" Georgia Senator Sam Nunn insisting that only powers." The implication was clear: Kuwait (Baker and Powell) that could be handled by air and naval forces be used against Saddam, no was not worth the bones of a single American sanctions, diplomacy and an embargo on Iraqi ground troops. soldier. oil. With Gorbachev's reformers foundering The U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly and the Arab League had all in the face of counter-attacks from Soviet (Continued on Page 11) condemned the invasion and there was hardliners, could America really afford to Listen to embark on war in Iraq? The always cautious discussion in the White House of an air and Powell fed on doubts like that. A war with Iraq Dr. Doug Rokke naval blockade of Iraq, but Secretary of Defense would not be easy -- "harder than Panama or Cheney wanted more than just protests, Libya, this would be the N.F.L., not a on sanctions or a quarantine. Saddam was angling The ‘X’ Zone Radio Show to "dominate OPEC, the Gulf and the Arab scrimmage" -- and such a war as this seemed as with ill-advised to Powell as Vietnam. He chided world." His tanks were now forty kilometers Cheney for sounding "Carteresque" in his Rob McConnell from Saudi Arabia, and even if he didn't take resolve to defend the Gulf. Carter, of course, at their oil wells, he would "have an impact... The had made all the right noises about defending www.xzonepodcast.com problem would get worse, not better." Saddam's