Introduction Two Surprises, Two Wars, Two Presidents, One Family

Abstract

On August 1, 1990, Iraqi troops rolled into Kuwait. During the two weeks prior to the invasion, members of the U.S. intelligence community had monitored the deployment of Iraqi forces, and several of them had concluded that Saddam Hussein intended to invade Kuwait. The intelligence evaluators forwarded their analyses to the top members of George H. W. Bush’s administration, who refused to validate the conclusions until just a few hours before the start of the invasion. For the next few days, Bush and his senior advisers met to discuss Iraq’s action and the manner in which the United States should respond. Prior to the second meeting, however, the president and his national security adviser had agreed that the United States could not tolerate Iraq’s belligerent act and should use military force, if necessary, to expel the invaders. In view of their decision, the other senior advisers had no choice but to concur. Some time later, while the Pentagon was in the process of devising its military strategy, the senior foreign policy-makers in the Bush administration hastily decided that they would confine the operation to the extraction of the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and would refrain from marching toward Baghdad with the intent of overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime.