hope they stay out of there because I don't want the people in the hotel to not have a good
night's sleep. The drums have ceased, oddly enough.
But just as Bush was speaking, reporters could hear the thumping resume in the park
outside. The drummers, much to Bush's chagrin, were at it again. Soon Lafayette Park
was fenced in by the Bushmen.
On February 15, Radio Baghdad offered negotiations leading to the withdrawl of Iraqi
forces from Kuwait. Bush, in tandem with the new British prime Minister, John Major,
rejected this overture with parellel rhetoric. For Bush, Saddam's peace bid was "a cruel
hoax;" for Major, it was "a bogus sham." The Kremlin, seeking to save face, found the
proposal "encouraging." Iraq was now pulling key military units out of Kuwait, and Bush
judged that the moment was ripe to call for an insurrection and military coup against
Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party government. "There's another way for the
bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters
into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside." [fn 86] With
this call, Bush triggered the simultaneous uprisings of the pro-Iranian Shiites in Iraq's
southern provinces, and of the Kurds in the north, many of whom now foolishly
concluded that US military assistance would be forthcoming. It was a cynical ploy, since
Bush can be seen in retrospect to have had no intention whatever of backing up these
rebellions. During the month of March, tens of thousand of additional casualties and
untold human misery would be the sole results of these insurrections, which led to the
mass exodus of the hapless and wretched Kurds into Iran and Turkey.
The Soviets were still seeking to save half a face from a massacre which they had aided
and abetted; diplomacy would also help take the mind of the world off the Baltic
bloodshed of the Soviet special forces. During the week after Saddam Hussein's trial
balloon for a pullout from Kuwait, Yevgeny Primakov attempted to assemble a cease-
fire. Primakov's efforts were brushed aside with single-empire arrogance by Bush, who
spoke off the cuff at a photo opportunity: "Very candidly...while expressing appreciation
for his sending it to us, it falls well short of what would be required. As far as I am
concerned, there are no negotiations. The goals have been set out. There will be no
concessions." Primakov had issued a call that "the slaughter must be stopped. I am not
saying that the war was justified before, but its continuation cannot now be justified from
any point of view. A people is perishing." Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh complained
that "the plan was addressed to the Iraqi leadership, so [Bush] rejected the plan which did
not belong to him." [fn 87] Diplomatically, the once mighty Soviet Union had ceased to
exist; the collapse of the Soviet state had been accelerated by its seconding of the Anglo-
American designs in the Gulf, and the opinions of the Kremlin now counted for nothing.
Primakov and Tariq Aziz then proceeded to transform the original Soviet 8-point plan
into a more demanding 6-point plan, including some of the demands of the Anglo-
Americans on the timetable of withdrawal and other issues. Bush's answer to that, on the
morning of Friday, February 22, was a 24-hour ultimatum to Iraq to begin an "immediate
and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait" or face an immediate attack by coalition
land forces. Many Iraqi units were now already in retreat; the essence of the US demands