in the neighborhood of 500,000 by the end of 1991.
In early March, Bush addressed a special session of the Congress on what he chose to call the end
of the war. This time it was Bush's personal apotheosis; he was frequently interrupted by manic
applause. Bush's mind war had succeeded. Resistance to the war had been driven virtually
underground; bloodthirsty racism ruled most public discourse for a time. It was one of the most
wretched moments of the American spirit. Bush, who was consciously preparing new wars, wascareful not to promise peace: "Even the new world order cannot guarantee an era of perpetual
peace." Bush now turned his attention to "the domestic front," where he was quick to make clear
that the new world order begins at home: his main proposal was the administration's omnibus crime
bill. One of the main features of this monstrous legislation was an unprecedented expansion in the
use of the death penalty for a long list of federal crimes. Bush had enjoyed giving internationalultimata so much that he decided to try one on the Congress: "If our forces could win the ground (^)
war in 100 hours, then surely the Congress can pass this legislation in 100 days. Let that be a
promise we make tonight to the American people." [fn 90] Bring the killing back home, said Bush
in effect.
Many commentators, especially Bush's own allies in the neoconservative pro-Zionist camp, were
greatly disappointed that Bush was terminating the hostilities without liquidating Saddam Hussein,
and without guaranteeing the partition of Iraq. Bush was restrained by a series of considerations.
Further penetration into Iraq would have necessitated the long-term occupation of large cities,
exposing the occupiers to the dangers that the US Marines had faced in Beirut in 1982. If Busdetermined to wipe out the government of Iraq, then he would have to provide an occupation h were
government, or else let the country collapse into civil war and partition. One of the big winners in
any partition would surely be Iran; the mullah regime would use its Shiite organizations in southern
Iraq to carve off a large piece of Iraqi territory, placing Iran in an excellent position to threaten both
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait early in the postwar period. This would have caused much dismay in theSaudi royal family. Arab public opinion was inflamed to such a degree that most Arab governments (^)
would not have been able to participate in the destruction of the Iraqi Baath Party, since this was an
objective that was clearly not covered by the UN resolutions. Based on these and other
considerations, Bush appears to have made a characteristic snap decision to end the war. Bush
ended the war with a claim that the US casualty list for the entire operation stood at 223 killed; but,in keeping with the mind war censorship that had cloaked all the proceedings, no casualty list was
ever published. The true number of those killed is therefore not known, and is likely to be much
higher than that claimed by Bush.
A part of southern Iraq was occupied by the US and other coalition forces. On March 14, Buswith Mitterrand on the French island of Martinique and there was some falling out on questions ofh met
the future new world order "architecture" in the Middle East. On March 16, Bush met with British
Prime Minister Major on Bermuda. Bush's public line was that there could be no normalization of
relations with Iraq as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. Since the days of the Treaty of
Sevres at the end of Wstate in eastern Anatolia. The British were also anxious to use the aftermath of the war in order toorld War I, London had been toying with the idea of an independent Kurdish
establish precedents in international law to undermine the sovereignty of independent nations, and
to create ethnic enclaves short of a complete partition of Iraq. British, Israeli, and US assets had
combined to provoke a large-scale Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq, and this produced a civil war
in the country. But the Republican Guard, which had allegedly been destroyed by the coalition, andthe Iraqi army, were still capable of defending the Baath Party government against these challenges, (^)
a factor which doubtless also cooled Bush's enthusiasm for further intervention.
During the latter half of March, calls were made for the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern
Iraq under the protection of the coalition. On April 2, the State Department restated the Bush