by other participants in the 8 AM meeting. Scowcroft was otherwise the leading hawk,
raving that "We don't have the option to appear not be acting." [fn 34] This meeting
nevertheless ended without any firm decisions for further measures beyond the freezing
of assets already decided, and can thus be classified as inconclusive. During Bush's flight
to Aspen, Colorado, Bush got on the telephone with several Middle East leaders, who he
said had urged him to forestall US intervention and allow ample time for an "Arab
solution."
Bush's meetings with Thatcher in Aspen on Thursday, August 2, and on Monday, August
6 at the White House are of the most decisive importance in understanding the way in
which the Anglo-Americans connived to unleash the Gulf war. Before meeting with
Thatcher, Bush was clearly in an agitated and disturbed mental state, but had no bedrock
committment to act in the Gulf crisis. After the sessions with Thatcher, Bush was rapidly
transformed into a raving, monomaniacal warmonger and hawk. The transition was
accompanied by a marked accentuation of Bush's overall psychological impairment, with
a much increased tendency towards rage episodes.
The impact of Bush's Aspen meeting with Thatcher was thus to brainwash Bush towards
a greater psychological disintegration, and towards a greater pliability and suggestibility
in regard's to London's imperial plans. One can speculate that the "Iron Lady" was armed
with a Tavistock Institute psychological profile of Bush, possibly centering on young
George's feelings of inadequacy when he was denied the love of his cold, demanding
Anglo-Saxon sportswoman mother. Perhaps Thatcher's underlying psychological
gameplan in this (and previous) encounters with Bush was to place herself along the line
of emotional cathexis associated in Bush's psyche with the internalized image of his
mother Dorothy, especially in her demanding and domineering capacity as the grey
eminence of the Ranking Committee. George had to do something to save the embattled
English-speaking peoples, Thatcher might have hinted. Otherwise, he would be letting
down the side in precisely the way which he had always feared would lose him his
mother's love. But to do something for the Anglo-Saxons in their hour of need, George
would have to be selfless and staunch and not think of himself, just as mother Dorothy
had always demanded: he would have to risk his entire political career by deploying US
forces in overwhelming strength to the Gulf. This might have been the underlying
emotional content of Thatcher's argument.
On a more explicit level, Thatcher also possessed an array of potent arguments. Back in
1982, she might have recalled, she had fallen in the polls and was being written off for a
second term as a result of her dismal economic performance. But then the Argentinians
seized the Malvinas, and she, Thatcher, acting in defiance of her entire cabinet and of
much of British public opinion, had sent the fleet into the desperate gamble of the
Malvinas war. The British had reconquered the islands, and the resultant wave of
jingoism and racist chauvinism had permitted Thatcher to consolidate her regime until the
present day. Thatcher knew about the "no new taxes" controversy and the Neil Bush
affair, but all of that would be quickly suppressed and forgotten once the regiments began
to march off to the Saudi front. For Bush, this would have been a compelling package.