On July 24, prebalanced between support for the "moderate" Kuwaitis and Saudis on the one hand, andss releases from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon were
encouragement for an Arab-mediated peaceful settlement. Margaret Tutwiler at the State
Department stressed that the United States had no committment to defend Kuwait:
We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait and there are no special defense or securitycommittments to Kuwait. We also remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and (^)
collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf, with whom we have deep and long-standing ties.
An anonymous US military official quoted by the Washington Post added that if Iraq seized a small
amount of Kuwaiti territory as a means of gaining negotiating leverage in OPEC, "the United Statesprobably would not directly challenge the move, but would join with all Arab governments in
denouncing it and putting pressure on Iraq to back down." Two US KC-135 air tankers were about
to carry out refueling exercises with the United Arab Emirates Air Force, it was announced, and the
six ships of the US Joint Task Force Middle East based in the Persian Gulf were deployed Monday
July 23 for "cUS ships were in the northern Gulf, near the coasts of Iraq and Kuwait. [fn 31] Butommunications support" for this air exercise, according to the Pentagon. Two of these there was
nothing blood-curdling about any of this, and Bush's personal silence was the most eloquent of all.
In addition, the Bush administration was lobbying in Congress during this week in opposition to a
new round of Congressional trade sanctions against Iraq. Iraqi capabilities to take Kuwait were now
in place, and the Bush regime had not reacted.
On July 25, US Ambassador April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein, and conveyed a highly
misleading message about the US view of the crisis. Glaspie assured Saddam Hussein that she was
acting on direct instructions from Bush, and then delivered her celebrated line: "We have no
opinion on the Arab-Arab conflict, like your bordeindication that these were indeed the instructions that had been given directly by the chief agentr disagreement with Kuwait." There is every (^)
provocateur in the White House, Bush. "I have direct instructions from the president to seek better
relations with Iraq," Glaspie told Saddam. According to the Iraqi transcript of this meeting, Glaspie
stressed that this had always been the US position: "I was in the American embassy in Kuwait
during the late 1960's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express noopinion on this issue and the issue is not associated with America." [fn 32] Saddam Hussein
illustrated Iraq's economic grievances and need of economic assistance for postwar reconstruction,
points for which Ms. Glaspie expressed full US official comprehension. Shortly after this, April
Glaspie left Kuwait to take her summer vacation, another signal of elaborate US government
disinterest in the Kuwait-Iraq crisis.
According to the Washington Post of July 26, Saddam Hussein used the meeting with Glaspie to
send Bush a message that "'nothing will happen' on the military front while this weekend's
mediation efforts are taking place." The mediation referred to an effort by Egyptian President
Mubarak and the Saudi government to organize direct talks between Iraq and Kuwait, which weretentatively set for the weekend of July 28-29 in Jeddah. Over that weekend, Bush still had
absolutely nothing to say about the Gulf crisis. He refused to comment on what Thurgood Marshall
had said about him and his man Souter: "I have a high regard for the separation of powers and for
the Supreme Court," was Bush's reply to reporters. (Attorney General Thornburgh said he was
"saddened" by Marshall's comment.)
According to the Washington Post of July 30, the Saudi government announced on July 29 that the
Iraqi-Kuwaiti talks, which had been postponed, would take place in Jeddah starting Tuesday, July
- The Kuwaiti delegation abruptly walked out of these talks, a grandstanding gesture obviously
calculated to incense the Iraqi leadership. On the morning of July 31, the Washington Post reported