Tag: Iraq

7 November 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Saddam Hussein

 

Saudi Arabia opens a border-crossing point with Iraq to facilitate Saudi exports to Iraq under the U.N. “oil for food” program. The land border had been closed between the two countries since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Since at least 1998 (when U.N. inspectors were ejected from the country), sanctions against Iraq had been crumbling, prominent countries like France and Russia increasingly contracting with Baghdad, commercial air travel restored, and illicit trade increasing.

There’s no evidence now that much weapons-of-mass-destruction materials flowed into the country between 1998 and 9/11, but the general crumbling of sanctions worried Washington that indeed Saddam would escape from “the box” he’d been put in.

Colin Powell in particular as Secretary of State in the new administration would seek to reinvigorate sanctions with his proposed “smart sanctions” regime. But the program never got off the ground before 9/11 and then certain war with Iraq loomed.

11 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Bush and Gore engage in their second debate, at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and covering foreign policy, focused very much on Iraq.

Bush calls for a less interventionist foreign policy, saying, “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us.” Gore responds, “I think we also have to have a sense of mission in the world.”

Bush says that America’s leaders “…must be… humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.” He says that U.S. should “reach out to moderate Arab nations, like Jordan and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

He says that “the coalition against Saddam has fallen apart or it’s unraveling” and that “sanctions are being violated.”

“We don’t know whether he’s developing weapons of mass destruction,” Bush says, adding, “He better not be or there’s going to be a consequence should I be the president.”

Citing the absence of inspectors, a fractured coalition, and Iraqi meddling in the Middle East, he says that “it’s going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him,” never actually voicing regime change as a prerequisite for an Iraq policy. But he aligns himself with the Clinton administration, saying that what he is basically proposing is no different than what is current policy.

10 October 1990

Posted on by William Arkin
Nayirah testifies before Congress in 1990

 

The era of modern media manipulation begins with the appearance of 15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ, a Kuwaiti refugee who told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus a harrowing story about Iraqi atrocities in occupied Kuwait. Nayirah speaks of witnessing Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, stealing the incubators and leaving the babies to die. Amnesty International corroborates the story. It is a front page sensation, with others repeating similar tales.

It turn out that her testimony, representing Citizens for a Free Kuwait, was paid for by the Kuwait government in exile through a contract with Hill & Knowlton, to create an information campaign that would solidify any flagging support for a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Rick MacArthur revealed in 1992 that  Nayirah was really the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and that while there were abundant examples of Iraqi war crimes in Kuwait, the incident likely never happened.