motion. On this same day, the Kremlin despatched troop contingents to seven Soviet
republics where nationalist movements were gaining ground.
The Congressional debate provided many eloquent pleas, generally from Democrats, for
delaying military action in order to save Americans from useless slaughter. But these
pleas were almost always vitiated by a failure to recognize the equal claim to humanity of
the Iraqi population; the Democrats who urged continued reliance on sanctions were in
effect calling for an equal or greater genocide prolonged over time. One exception was
Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, who voted against the Bush war resolution and the
Democrats' sanctions resolution on the grounds that he opposed the entire military
deployment in the Middle East; Hatfield argued for a peaceful settlement using
diplomacy alone. This Republican defection in the name of high principle may have
attracted the darts of Bush's vindictiveness; in May a report on Hatfield's personal
finances appearing in the Capitol Hill weekly Roll Call alleged that a former
Congressman and a California businessman had forgiven $133,000 in loans to Hatfield
over an 8-year period. This information was somehow leaked from Senate records. [fn
74] The obvious intent of this story was to make it look as if the loan forgiveness had
been used to buy influence. Hatfield's actions were not in violation of senate rules at the
time these loans were forgiven.
Bush's war resolution passed the Senate by the narrow margin of 52-47; Sen. Cranston,
who was absent because of illness, would have come to the senate and voted against the
war if this would have changed the outcome. This vote reflects a deep ambivalence in the
ruling elite about Bush's bellicose line, which was not as popular in US ruling circles as it
was in London. Bush's margin of victory was provided by a group of southern Bush
Democrats (Gore, Graham, Breaux, Robb, Shelby). In the House, a similar Bush war
resolution passed by 250 to 183. Many Congressmen from blue-collar districts being
pounded by the economic depression reflected the disillusionment of their constituents by
voting against Bush and the war. But the resistance was not enough.
Despite the extremely narrow mandate he had extorted from the Congress, Bush now
appeared in a gloating press conference: he had his blank check for war and genocide.
Now Bush was careful to create pretexts for attacking Iraq, even if Saddam were to order
his forces out of Kuwait. Bush noted that "it would be, at this date, I would say
impossible to comply fully with the United Nations resolutions," and he "would still
worry about it, because it might not be in full compliance." [fn 75] UN resolution 242,
calling for Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied in the 1967 war, had been
flouted for almost a quarter century, and the nation of Lebanon had just been snuffed out
by Bush's friend Assad, but all of this paled into total irrelevance in comparison to the
need to destroy Iraq.
The mad dog of war was now unleashed on the world. Later, in early June, Bush would
edify the Southern Baptist Convention with a tearful and convulsive account of his long
night in Camp David as he prepared to give the order to attack. Bush's story, quite
fantastic for a chief executive who had pursued his "splendid little war" with
monomaniac fury since August 3, is a reflection of the Goebbels-like cynicism of the