Part 15, LURE TO WAR: Bush Sucks Saddam Into Kuwait [Agee] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PRODUCING THE PROPER CRISIS A speech by former CIA official Philip Agee Transcribed from the Oct. 1990 issue of Z Magazine, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (continuation) How many of you have friends or relatives right now in Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf area? I wonder how they feel, so close to giving their lives to protect a feudal kingdom where women are stoned to death for adultery, where a thief is punished by having his hand amputated, where women can't drive cars or swim in the same pool as men? Where bibles are forbidden and no religion, save Islam, is allowed? Where Amnesty International reports that torture is routine, and that last year 111 people were executed, 16 of them political prisoners, all but one by public beheading. And not by a clean cut with a guillotine, but with that long curved sword that witnesses say requires various chops. Not that Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait before the invasion, are any different in terms of political repression than any number of U.S.-supported allies. But to give your life for those corrupt, cruel family dictatorships? Bush says "We're stopping aggression." If that were true, the first thing U.S. forces would have done after landing -- they would have dethroned the Gulf emirs, sheiks and kings who, every day, are carrying out the worst aggression against their own people, especially women. Mainstream media haven't quite said it yet, as far as I know, but the evidence is mounting that George Bush and his entourage wanted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, encouraged it, and then refused to prevent it when they could have. I'll get back to Bush later, but first, a quick review of what brought on this crisis. Does the name Cox bring anything special to mind -- Sir Percy Cox? In a historical sense, this is the man responsible for today's Gulf crisis. Sir Percy Cox was the British High Commissioner in Baghdad after World War I who, in 1922, drew the lines in the sand establishing, for the first time, national borders between Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And in each of these new states the British helped set up and consolidate ruling monarchies through which British banks, commercial firms, and petroleum companies could obtain monopolies. Kuwait, however, had for centuries belonged to the Basra Province of the Ottoman Empire. Iraq and the Iraqis never recognized Sir Percy's borders. He had drawn those lines, as historians have confirmed, in order to deliberately deprive Iraq of a viable seaport on the Persian Gulf. The British wanted no threat from Iraq to their dominance in the Gulf where they had converted no less than ten sheikdoms, including Kuwait, into colonies. The divide-and-rule principle, so well practiced in this country since the beginning. In 1958, the British-installed monarchy in Iraq was overthrown in a military coup. Three years later, in 1961, Britain granted independence to Kuwait, and the Iraqi military government massed troops on the Kuwaiti border threatening to take the territory by force. Immediately, the British dispatched troops, and Iraq backed down, still refusing to recognize the border. Similar Iraqi threats occurred in 1973 and 1976. This history, Saddam Hussein's justification for annexing Kuwait, is in the books for anyone to see. But weeks went by as I waited and wondered why the International Herald Tribune, which publishes major articles from the Washington Post, New York Times and wire services, failed to carry the background. Finally, a month after the invasion, the Herald Tribune carried a Washington Post article on the historical context written by Glenn Frankel. I've yet to find this history in TIME or NEWSWEEK. TIME, in fact, went so far as to say that Iraq's claims to Kuwait were "without any historical basis." Hardly surprising, since giving exposure to the Iraqi side might weaken the campaign to Hitlerize Saddam Hussein. Also absent from current accounts is the C.I.A.'s role in the early 1970's to foment and support armed Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. The Agency, in league with the Shah of Iran, provided $16 million in arms and other supplies to the Kurds, leading to Iraqi capitulation to the Shah in 1975 over control of the Shatt-al-Arab Waterway. This is the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates that separates the two countries inland from the Gulf and is Iraq's only access to Basra, its upriver port. Five years later, in 1980, Iraq invaded Iran to redress the C.I.A.-assisted humiliation of 1975, and to regain control of the estuary, beginning the eight-year war that cost a million lives. Apart from Iraq's historical claims on Kuwait and its need for access to the sea, two related disputes came to a head just before the invasion. First was the price of oil. OPEC had set the price at $18 per barrel in 1986, together with production quotas to maintain that price. But Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had long exceeded their quotas, driving the price down to around $13 in June. Iraq, saddled with a seventy billion dollar debt from the war with Iran, was losing billions of dollars in oil revenues which normally account for 95 percent of its exports. Meanwhile, industrialized oil consumers like the United States were enjoying the best price in forty years (in inflation-adjusted dollars). Iraq's other claim against Kuwait was theft. While Iraq was occupied with Iran during the war, Kuwait began pumping from Iraq's vast Rumaila field that dips into the disputed border area. Iraq demanded payment for oil taken from this field as well as forgiveness of Kuwaiti loans to Iraq during the war with Iran. Then in July, Iraq massed troops on the Kuwaiti border while OPEC Ministers met in Geneva. That pressure brought Kuwait and the Emirates to agree to honor quotas, and OPEC set a new target price of $21, although Iraq had insisted on $25 per barrel. After that, Hussein increased his troops on the border from 30,000 to 100,000. On August 1st, Kuwaiti and Iraqi negotiators meeting in Saudi Arabia, failed to reach agreement over the loans, oil thefts, and access to the sea for Iraq. The next night Iraq invaded. Revelations since then, together with a review of events prior to the invasion, strongly suggest that U.S. policy was to encourage Hussein to invade and, when invasion was imminent, to do nothing to discourage him. Consider the following: (to be continued) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The American Public is evidently in dire need of the truth, for when the plutocracy feeds us sweet lies instead of the bitter truth that would evoke remedial action by the People, then we are in peril of sinking inextricably into despotism. So, please post the episodes of this ongoing series to computer bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. The need for concerned people, alerting their neighbors to overshadowing dangers, still exists, as it did in the era of Paul Revere. That need is as enduring as society itself. John DiNardo The episodes of this and other series can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from the site: red.css.itd.umich.edu Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your e-mail address as the password. The files are kept in the directory /pub/Politics/Essays/Conspiracy Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the user is on. On a UNIX machine, at the command prompt, type the following: ftp red.css.itd.umich.edu This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems. Archivist: Paul Southworth, pauls@css.itd.umich.edu