Council gathered in the Cabinet Room. At the opening of this session there was a photo opportunity
to let Bush put out the preliminary line on Iraq and Kuwait. Bush told the reporters:
We're not discussing intervention.
Q: You're not contemplating any intervention or sending troops?
Bush: I'm not contemplating such action, and I, again, would not discuss it if I were.
According to published accounts, during the meeting that followed the one prospect that got a rise
out of Bush was the alleged Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia. This, as we will see, was one of the main
arguments used by Thatcher later in the day to goad Bush to irreversible committment to massivetroop deployment and to war. A profile of Bush's reactions on this score could easily have been
communicated to Thatcher by Scowcroft or 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 flightto 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 Ginadequacy when he was denied the love of his cold, demanding Anglo-Saxon sportswomaneorge's feelings of (^)
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 Comembattled English-speaking peoples, Thatcher might have hinted. Otherwise, he would be lettingmittee. George had to do something to save the
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. Thismight 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