sentiment with wildly exaggerated reports about Iraq's nuclear preparations; these
accounts, like the later alleged findings of "UN inspector" David Kay, failed to
distinguish between peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy; the name of this game
was technological apartheid. This campaign had evoked much skepticism: "Bush's
Atomic Red Herring" was the title of one op-ed in the New York Times.
Anti-war sentiment now crystallized around the hearings being held by Sam Nunn's
Senate Armed Services Committee. Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral William J. Crowe and General David C. Jones, urged a policy of continued
reliance on the sanctions. They were soon joined by former Secretary of Defense James
R. Schlesinger, Gen. William Odom, and other figures of past regimes. Bush's principal
support came from the croaking voice of Henry Kissinger, who was for war as soon as
practicable. These were the days when King Fahd flirted briefly with the idea of a
negotiated settlement, before he was reminded by the State Department that he ruled an
occupied country. "Once Again: What's the Rush?" asked the New York Times of
November 29. Bush wanted the Congress to pass a resolution giving him a blank check to
wage war, but he hesitated to set off a debate that might go on all the way to January 15
and beyond, and in which he risked being beaten. After all, Bush was still refusing to
negotiate.
Now, on Friday, November 30, Bush executed the cynical tactic that would ultimately
paralyze his craven domestic opposition and clear the way to war: he made a fake offer of
negotiations with Iraq:
However, to go the extra mile for peace, I will issue an invitation to Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz to come to Washington at a mutually convenient time during the latter part of
the week of December 10th to meet with me. And I'll invite ambassadors of several of
our coalition partners in the gulf to join me in that meeting.
In addition, I am asking Secretary Jim Baker to go to Baghdad to see Saddam Hussein,
and I will suggest to Iraq's president that he receive the secretary of state at a mutually
convenient time between December 15 and January 15 of next year. [fn 70]
It was all a fiendish lie, even down to the offer of times and venues for the talks. When
Iraq responded with proposals for the schedule of meetings, Bush welched and reneged.
Iraq released the US internees, but Bush still wanted war. "We've got to continue to keep
the pressure on," was his reaction. Then came a full month of useless haggling, which
was exactly what Bush wanted. As his text had pointed out, he was not interested in real
negotiation anyway; the UN resolutions had already resolved everything. The real
purpose of this gambit was to suppress the domestic opposition, since negotiations were
allegedly now ongoing.
The most important opposition to a January 15 war according to the deadline railroaded
through the UN by Bush came from the US Army, the service least enthralled by the idea
of a needless war. During a visit by Powell and Cheney to Saudi Arabia, Lieut. Gen.
Calvin A. H. Waller, the second in command of US forces in the Gulf, remarked that