21-02-2003 08:39									#1
	Paul Wolfowitz 1, Colin Powell 0 Remove this text

Watching Frontline (PBS) and learning some things not too flattering to Powell. Near the end up the Gulf War, Wolfowitz - then in the Bush administration - was angry that Bush 1 urged the Iraqi people to rebel only to stand by as they got slaughtered when they followed Bush's advice. Wolfowitz wanted us to take out Saddam, or at least, help the rebels overthrow Saddam, not stand by and do nothing. Powell and Bush opposed intervening. I keep hearing Wolfowitz is a hawk, and by implication, a warmonger we should be wary of. Perhaps, but he seems to have been the one with a conscience...

	21-02-2003 08:43									#2
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I think when we left the rebels behind it was one of the most dishonorable things we have ever done.

That's one of the main reasons I support taking out Saddam is because we need to make good on what we originally told them.

Leaving Saddam behind though was a grave error. Never half ass the job.

	21-02-2003 08:49									#3
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Yup, and that wasn't the first time the US screwed Iraqi dissidents. I believe Nixon basicly did the same thing back when the Shah was in power in Iran. Iraq and Iran were at war and we supported Iran and Iraqi dissidents. But Iran signed a peace treaty with Iraq and the Iraqis were left twisting at the end of a rope.

	21-02-2003 08:57									#4
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Damn I didn't know that part.

	21-02-2003 09:37									#5
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Berz,

Are you advocating that we should have militarily intervened again in Iraq back then? That's what it sounds like...

	21-02-2003 09:57									#6
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quote: Leaving Saddam behind though was a grave error. Never half ass the job.

It would have been hard as Hell to get rid of him. We only had supplies to liberate Kuwait, and our allies would have definetly opposed taking Saddam out.

Not to mention Congress telling Bush I NO!

	21-02-2003 10:02									#7
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That was the theory / justification but I don't buy it.

Allies had the momentum and I think Baghdad would have fallen very quickly.

This was a half assed job.

	21-02-2003 10:03									#8
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In Kuwait? No, my gripe is the same as Wolfowitz'. Bush 1 told the Iraqi people to rebel, and it's my understanding that he did that because Iraqi dissidents, wary of US policy ala Nixon's backstabbing from the 1970's, wanted some public assurance from Bush of support for the rebellion once they stuck their necks out.

1) I would not have had the US ambassador (April Glasby) tell Saddam we had no treaty with Kuwait and no desire to get involved in inter-Arab disputes at a time when Saddam was massing troops on the Kuwaiti border in response to a border dispute over Kuwait allegedly side drilling into Iraqi oil fields. It's clear to me Saddam did not want to do anything to really anger the US since we helped him during the war with Iran and sought the meeting with the US ambassador to get signals about our resolve should he invade Kuwait. Bush 1 really screwed up.

2) Once Bush 1 blundered by effectively sending him a green light, I would not have went to war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

3) Once expelled from Kuwait and the message to rebel was sent by Bush 1, I would have supported the rebellion, not turned my back as they got slaughtered.

So my position depends on what point in time I'm put in charge, so to speak.

	21-02-2003 10:04									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui quote: Leaving Saddam behind though was a grave error. Never half ass the job. It would have been hard as Hell to get rid of him. We only had supplies to liberate Kuwait, and our allies would have definetly opposed taking Saddam out. Not to mention Congress telling Bush I NO!

Yeah, the resolution said only to liberate kuwait. Unfortunately, we could not go after Saddam for that political reason. Hopefully politics will prevail today and allow us to take him out now.

	21-02-2003 10:10									#10
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Exactly, Kramerman, that resolution BARELY passed, with most Dems against it (and remember back then they had the majority).

	21-02-2003 10:11									#11
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Imran, what do you mean we lacked the supplies? Saddam was on the brink of collapse and just denying him the use of helicopter gunships might have been enough. The reason we stopped was the propsect of "instability" should Saddam fall. We didn't want Iran's position improved by the collapse of Saddam and Iraq thrown into turmoil over who would end up in charge. Plus, the Turks didn't want an independent Kurdistan on their border. The Shi'ite majority might have ended up in charge and they were more sympathetic with Iran than other Arab states, so Israel and Saudi Arabia didn't want Saddam to collapse either.

	21-02-2003 10:17									#12
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I still don't buy it, I mean Bush got the no-fly zones installed easy enough.

If he knew he couldn't pull of support to take the capital then he shouldn't have asked the Iraqis to rebel and then leave them hanging.

I mean that is heartbreaking.

	21-02-2003 10:20									#13
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quote: Imran, what do you mean we lacked the supplies?

We only massed enough troops and gave them enough weaponry for liberation of Kuwait. We might have run all over Iraq easily (doubtful), but Saddam would have eluded us as OBL does today.

	21-02-2003 10:29									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Ted Striker I still don't buy it, I mean Bush got the no-fly zones installed easy enough. If he knew he couldn't pull of support to take the capital then he shouldn't have asked the Iraqis to rebel and then leave them hanging. I mean that is heartbreaking.

indeed. its like a Bay of Pigs part II

***

Berzerker,
reguardless of having supplies or not, we could not go after Saddam ourselves. Schwartzcopf (sp?...c'mon, gimme a break...) wanted to, but could not because of UN politics, he had to settle with a cease-fire. fear of instability had nothing to do with it, AFAIK. It is true Saddam was on the brink of collapse, that is why Bush incouraged the uprisings, right or wrong, this is why. The problem was, in the cease-fire we allowed Iraq to retain their helicopters, which they used to put down the rebellion with impunity. Whithout the helis, the uprisings might have had a chance in hell to have been successful with Saddams forces and resources still rearing from their massive defeat. tho, a more likely scenario would have been a coup in Saddam's weakest hour, and an equally dispicable man would be in power today.

kman

	21-02-2003 11:00									#15
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Imran, I didn't know you were so familiar with our logistics at the time. Like I said, we didn't need to take Baghdad, all we had to do was keep Iraqi helicopters from flying missions and we could have finished off the Iraqi Republican army before they could retreat to Baghdad.

Kramerman, Bush went to great effort to get a UN resolution to expel Iraq from Kuwait but made no effort to get UN support for helping the Iraqi dissidents he urged to rebel. And when the US was establishing the cease fire terms, Shwarzkopf even said they got "snookered" when they allowed Iraq to use helicopters for "transportation", helicopters used to put down the rebellion. Instability was one of 2 reasons stated by the Bush administration following questions about why he turned his back on the Iraqi dissidents, the other being lack of UN "permission". If Bush knew he couldn't help Iraqi dissidents, he should have NEVER told them to rebel. No amount of spin will ever change what happened, and you can bet the Kurds felt betrayed...

	21-02-2003 11:02									#16
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quote: Imran, I didn't know you were so familiar with our logistics at the time.

I read MtG's posts .

	21-02-2003 11:12									#17
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Uh oh, I don't want to get into an argument with the living encyclopedia, but if we had the air power to maintain no fly zones, I don't know why we couldn't shoot down a few helicopters.

	21-02-2003 11:18									#18
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We we COULD, militarily, but not politically. An undeclared air war would not fly.

	21-02-2003 11:20									#19
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Still don't see why we let them keep the helicoptor fleet in the negotiations.

	21-02-2003 11:21									#20
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But this was part of the cease fire terms, not an undeclared war. We set up no fly zones for the benefit of Iraqi dissidents but let Iraq helicopters attack the very dissidents the no fly zones were set up to protect. I remember interviews with US soldiers who complained that they were ordered to stand by as dissidents were slaughtered.

	21-02-2003 11:29									#21
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Believe me, the media would have called it a war, and that would spread like wildfire.

	21-02-2003 17:42									#22
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What Bush did in 1991 wasn't a "mistake," it was deliberate.

Bush's actions (and inactions) immediately after the war allowed Saddam to destroy the Iraqi opposition groups whose rise to power would be greatly inconvenient to Washington.

The US (at least to date) has never supported a breakup of Iraq and has generally regarded existing Iraqi opposition groups as nuisances.

As Thomas Friedman explained a few months after the fact (NYT 7 July 1991), postwar sanctions would lead some of Saddam's generals to overthrow him and then, as Friedman wrote, "Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein."

The flaw, of course, was that the sanctions didn't do their work: there was no military coup. This could not have been foreseen; after all, look how quickly the embargo against Cuba had gotten rid of Fidel Castro. But in 1991, it seemed like a very plausible solution.

	21-02-2003 17:54									#23
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As I recall it was Bush I who called for the Iraqis to revolt and it was Bush I who wanted to end the war as quickly as possible. General Schwartzkoff wanted to continue the war for another week so he could finish off the Republican guard units but Bush was afraid the continuing slaughter of the Iraqi military would make him look bad in the international press.

	21-02-2003 19:12									#24
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quote: Originally posted by uh Clem What Bush did in 1991 wasn't a "mistake," it was deliberate. Bush's actions (and inactions) immediately after the war allowed Saddam to destroy the Iraqi opposition groups whose rise to power would be greatly inconvenient to Washington.

I remember this much differently. The biggest problem was Arab opposition to the US removing Saddam. We cobbled together a coalition to get Iraq out of Kuwait, with Arab acquiescence, and that set of political arrangements may not have survived had we removed Saddam at that time.

	22-02-2003 00:12									#25
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The Arab governments' interests and our own government's interests coincided. Frankly, I don't think Bush ever expected the Iraqi people to actually rise up, and was caught by surprise when they did. Had he known they would, I doubt he would have encouraged them, having never had any intention of helping them.

I'm not so cynical as to believe uh Clem's scenario, but there is no doubt that the US benefited from the Baathist regime not being overthrown.

	22-02-2003 00:35									#26
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another fine example of americans doing something without thinking about the consequences. we should have just done our job and left it at that. every time we try to increase our sphere of influence on other nations and groups without supporting it fully and with dubious means it bites us in the ass, and in this case from a humanitarian perspective.

	22-02-2003 01:30									#27
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quote: Originally posted by Berzerker In Kuwait? No, my gripe is the same as Wolfowitz'. Bush 1 told the Iraqi people to rebel, and it's my understanding that he did that because Iraqi dissidents, wary of US policy ala Nixon's backstabbing from the 1970's, wanted some public assurance from Bush of support for the rebellion once they stuck their necks out. 1) I would not have had the US ambassador (April Glasby) tell Saddam we had no treaty with Kuwait and no desire to get involved in inter-Arab disputes at a time when Saddam was massing troops on the Kuwaiti border in response to a border dispute over Kuwait allegedly side drilling into Iraqi oil fields. It's clear to me Saddam did not want to do anything to really anger the US since we helped him during the war with Iran and sought the meeting with the US ambassador to get signals about our resolve should he invade Kuwait. Bush 1 really screwed up. 2) Once Bush 1 blundered by effectively sending him a green light, I would not have went to war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. 3) Once expelled from Kuwait and the message to rebel was sent by Bush 1, I would have supported the rebellion, not turned my back as they got slaughtered.

quote: As I recall it was Bush I who called for the Iraqis to revolt and it was Bush I who wanted to end the war as quickly as possible. General Schwartzkoff wanted to continue the war for another week so he could finish off the Republican guard units but Bush was afraid the continuing slaughter of the Iraqi military would make him look bad in the international press.

and this is the part that I remember too, from my perspective. Apart from the looking bad part in the eyes of press, what I think is that Saddam in charge of Iraq still suited US at the time, but the tide soon changed for good.

	22-02-2003 01:40									#28
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That was a great Frontline episode they had last night.

On the Iraq issue, what Brent Scowcroft said to frontline in Oct 2001 was the salient point: Toppling Saddam was not one of the objectives of the Gulf War, and certainly not part of the UN mandate that gave the green light for war. The mission was to get Iraq out of Kuwait. We did so.

The problem we had in 1991 is the one we still have, and the reason why we are slowly undermining the Iraqi ooposition. The US wants a single Centralized Iraq, to balance mainly Iranian influences, now and in the future, in the gulf.

The other wonderful bit of that Frontline was that they clearly laid out the real reasons for this war: the New, Wolfowitz inspired policy that the admin. has taken as its own. As much as I dislike Bill Kristol, he was correct: for the last 6 months we have been using Colin powells tactics to achieve Paul Wolfowitz's aims.

	22-02-2003 03:15									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Berzerker In Kuwait? No, my gripe is the same as Wolfowitz'. Bush 1 told the Iraqi people to rebel, and it's my understanding that he did that because Iraqi dissidents, wary of US policy ala Nixon's backstabbing from the 1970's, wanted some public assurance from Bush of support for the rebellion once they stuck their necks out. 1) I would not have had the US ambassador (April Glasby) tell Saddam we had no treaty with Kuwait and no desire to get involved in inter-Arab disputes at a time when Saddam was massing troops on the Kuwaiti border in response to a border dispute over Kuwait allegedly side drilling into Iraqi oil fields. It's clear to me Saddam did not want to do anything to really anger the US since we helped him during the war with Iran and sought the meeting with the US ambassador to get signals about our resolve should he invade Kuwait. Bush 1 really screwed up.

April Glaspie has been fairly screwed on the subject of that conversation. The context of her remarks and her meeting was a pending meeting of the Arab league in which the Iraqi - Kuwaiti dispute was to be discussed, and Glaspie's remarks were directed toward that: That the US had no interest in the matter, and that it was something the US felt should be worked out bilaterally or through the arab league. Saddam's positioning of troops on the border was widely seen by both US and other arab intelligence services as mere posturing.

[/QUOTE]

	22-02-2003 04:18									#30
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quote: but Bush was afraid the continuing slaughter of the Iraqi military would make him look bad in the international press.

And yet this Bush is slaughterd for not considering international opinion on this war. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.