According to the Financial Times, between Sept 1988 and last winter, Dick Cheney (now US Vice president),when he was Chief Executive Officer of Haliburton, oversaw £23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to IRAQ, through two of its subsidiaries Dresser rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump!

This helped Saddam stay in power.

According to the Washington Post: "highly classified US intelligence assessments have determined that Saddam (in 1990) took US statements of neutrality...as a green light from the Bush administration for an invasion....

"The possible beneficiaries (of the war) cover the spectrum of companies in the defense industry..."

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Lawrence Korb, wrote that the sending of troops to Saudi Arabia was not primarily related to any threat from Saddam Hussein.

In 1990 Bush's popularity was plummeting.

The Bush government was under pressure to cut the monster military budget. A Senate Armed Services subcommittee had voted to cut military manpower by nearly three times more than the Bush government wanted.

OPEC was failing to keep limits on oil production in the Mideast. The market was being glutted with oil pumped from Iraq, which controlled 1/3 of the oil of the entire region.

Bush (senior) and his friends make some of their money from oil and firms related to the military. Bush had long been selling armaments to his friend Saddam Hussein.

It has been argued that Bush needed something dramatic to capture the headlines, raise oil prices and persuade Congress that more money should be spent on weapons.

Kuwait had been a part of Iraq during Turkish-Ottoman rule up to World War I.

The British took Kuwait away from Iraq, thus preventing Iraq from having an outlet to the Persian Gulf. By 1961 Iraq became 'independent', although relying on Britain to defend it.


Iraq, long before Saddam Hussein, claimed that it should have Kuwait back. Iraq stated it was open to negotiation and a compromise which would give it a corridor to the Gulf or its former islands in the Gulf. Iraq was regarded by many as one of the most civilised and modern of the Arab states.

Did Bush try to trick Saddam Hussein into a war that would 1. make Bush popular 2. put up the price of oil 3. force Congress to agree to spend more on armaments 4. increase America's dominance in the Middle East by enabling it to station troops in Saudi Arabia and by enabling it to continually threaten whoever was ruling Iraq?

In 1990 Saddam was in a difficult position. The war with Iran had left Iraq with big debts. The oil price was falling.

Iraq complained that 1. Kuwait was stealing oil from the Rumaila oil field that runs beneath the vaguely-defined Iraq-Kuwait border 2.Kuwait had built military structures on Iraqi territory 3. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were selling more oil than had been agreed by OPEC, thus flooding the market and bringing down prices.

If Bush did trick Saddam into a war, how did he do it? Some have argued that America encouraged Kuwait in the activities which annoyed Iraq.

What we do know for sure is that Bush sent out ambiguous messages to Iraq!

On 24 July 1990, US State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutweiler stated, "We do NOT have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait."

On 25 july, Saddam Hussein was personaly told by the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, that "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

In Congress on 31 July, Republican Lee Hamilton asked if it would be correct to say that if Iraq 'charged across the border into Kuwait' the United Staes did 'not have a treaty commitment which would obligate us t
o engage US forces' there. 'That is correct' responded John kelly, Assistant secretary of State.

Saddam seemed to get the message from this and other statements that it was safe to invade Kuwait.

Back in May 1990 there had been an Arab summit at which Saddam had offered to negotiate a fixed border with Kuwait. Yassar Arafat has stated that the US pressured Kuwait into not reaching a compromise.

US ally King Hussein has said that Arabs believe Saddam was goaded into invading.

In early July the US already had ready its plans for military action. In 1989-90 the US was running a computerised command post exercise involving possible action against Iraq. The Naval War College at Newport was involved in war games involving Iraq. Shaw Air Force base was involved in war games with targets in Iraq.

Americans do not like wars. So, how to get them angry?

The US government arranged a hoax, using public relations firm Hill and Knowlton. Hill and Knowlton got the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US to go on TV pretending to be a nurse. She related a horror story about Iraqi troops looting the incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the premature babies on the cold floor to die.

Enraged by the incubator story, Americans supported operation Desert Storm.

Within days there were US troops in Saudi Arabia. Oil prices rose. Bush popularity rose. Defence spending rose.

177,000,000 tons of bombs fell on Iraq. Over a million people have died. Many British soldiers and thousands of people in the Middle East ended up suffering from 'Gulf War syndrome'. There has been a tenfold increase in the number of cancer cases in Iraq (Kuwait and other countries also affected) since 1991 as well as a huge increase in the number of children born with deformities.

It is ironic that Bush senior should have turned on his friend Saddam. Prior to 1990, the CIA had always had warm and fr
iendly links with the Saddam's Baath Party. When the Baath Party had come to power in 1963 they had been helped by the CIA. The CIA provided the Baath Party with the names of left-wingers who were to be butchered.

Should the sanctions be lifted? Of course.

And we should consider, who are the real war criminals? And is Bush junior copying his father?