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 were tentatively 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 31. 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 that the Iraqi troop buildup had now
reached 100,000 men between Basra and the Kuwaiti border. At the Penatagon, when
spokesman Pete Williams was pressed to comment on this story, he replied:
I've seen reports about the troops there, but we've never discussed here numbers or made
any further comments on that. I think the State Department has some language they've
been using about obviously being concerned about any buildup of forces in the area, and
can go through, as we've gone through here, what our interests in the Gulf are, but we've
never really gotten into numbers like that or given that kind of information out. [fn 33]
Even the escalation of the Iraqi troop buildup had not disturbed the official US posture of
blase' indifference in the face of the crisis. It was a deliberate and studied deception
operation, what the Russians call maskirovka.
Bush would have known all about the additional Iraqi troops at least 36 hours earlier,
through satellite photos and embassy reports. But still Bush remained silent as a tomb.
Bush had plenty of opportunity that day to say something about the Gulf; he met with the
GOP Congressional leadership for more than an hour on the morning of July 31 and,
according to participants, told them he was "annoyed" at the pace of the budget talks,
which remained stalemated. At this time the White House was receiving intelligence
reports that made an Iraqi invasion seem more likely, and some officials were quoted in
the New York Times of the next day as having "expressed growing concern that hostilities
could break out...." But Bush said nothing, did nothing.
Then, in the afternoon, Bush reluctantly received a Latvian delegation led by Ivars
Godmanis. The Latvian request for an audience had at first been rudely rejected by the
White House, but then acceded to under pressure from some influential senators.