Abstract
In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, faced with a disrupted society and a debt-ridden economy, Saddam Hussein strove to achieve a balance between constructive reform and characteristic authoritarian control. As a way of flushing out political opposition within the country, he offered an amnesty to domestic dissidents; at the same time he invited political offenders outside Iraq to return home. In late 1988 Saddam launched ‘what seemed an Iraqi perestroika’.1 A new constitution was promised and also a range of economic reforms that would relax the Ba’athist grip on the nation. There was even the prospect of a new electoral law that would allow the emergence of a multi-party system, and Information Minister Latif Jasim commented that a free press was now a matter of ‘paramount interest’. Saddam also tried to build on what he declared as the Iraqi victory over Iran, a supposed triumph that had — according to Saddam — established the Iraqi leadership of the Arab world.
We have about 60% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. Our world task in this position is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.
US Policy Planning Staff, Washington 24 February 1948
If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn’t give a damn.
Lawrence Korb former US Assistant Defence Secretary 1990
I venture to say that if Kuwait produced bananas, instead of oil, we would not have 400,000 American troops there today.
Congressman Stokes, Ohio 12 January 1991
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Notes
Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm, Paladin, London, 1992, p. 55.
Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, Unholy Babylon, Victor Gollancz, London, 1991, pp. 238–9.
Mohamed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph, HarperCollins, London, 1992, p. 135.
Bishara A. Bahbah, ‘The crisis in the Gulf — why Iraq invaded Kuwait’, in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm, Canongate, London, 1992, p. 52.
J. Bulloch and H. Morris, Saddam’s War, Faber & Faber, London, 1991, p. 175;
Danial Yergin, Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, Simon and Schuster, London, 1991, pp. 749–50.
Pierre Salinger and Eric Laurent, Secret Dossier, The Hidden Agenda Behind the Gulf War, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991, pp. 32–3.
Joe Conason, ‘The Iraq lobby: Kissinger, the Business Forum & Co’, in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (eds), The Gulf War Reader, Times Books, Random House, New York, 1991, pp. 79–84.
James Ridgeway (ed. and Introduction), The March to War, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1991, p. 28.
David Hirst, The Guardian, London, 14 September 1990.
See Geoff Simons, Libya, The Struggle for Survival, Macmillan, London, 1993, ch. I.
Carl Zaisser, US Bribery and Arm-Twisting of Security Council Members during the November 29 Vote on the Resolution Allowing the use of Force in Ousting Iraq from Kuwait, 1991; cited by Pilger, op. cit., p. 141.
Raymond Bonner, Waltzing With a Dictator, Macmillan, London, 1987, pp. 245–6.
John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama, Made in the USA, Latin American Bureau, London, 1991, Appendix 1, ‘Violation of International Law’, pp. 113–18.
Naseer Aruri, ‘Human rights and the Gulf crisis: the verbal strategy of George Bush’, in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm, A Gulf Crisis Reader, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1992, p. 314.
George Bush, Iraqi Leader Threatens Values Worth Fighting For, January 1991; cited by Aruri, op. cit., p. 314.
John G. Healey, Amnesty International USA Response to President Bush’s Letter to Campus Newspapers, 15 January 1991.
For detailed descriptions of the chronology, from different perspectives, see Hiro, op. cit.; Heikal, op. cit.; Salinger and Laurent, op. cit.; Bob Woodward, The Commanders, Simon and Schuster, London, 1991.
Heikal, op. cit., pp. 246–7; see also John R. MacArthur, Second Front, Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill and Wang, New York, 1992.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, Bantam Press, London, 1992, p. 488.
Special Alert, FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission to Iraq, Number 237, July 1993.
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© 1994 Geoff Simons
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Simons, G. (1994). War with the West. In: Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23147-8_8
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