march off to the Saudi front. For Bush, this would have been a compelling package.
As far as Saddam Hussein was concerned, Thatcher's argument is known to have been built around
the ominous warning, "He won't stop!" Her message was that MI-6 and the rest of the fabled British
intelligence apparatus had concluded that Saddam Hussein's goal would be an immediate military
invasion and occupation of the immense Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its sensitive Moslem holy
places, its trackless deserts and its warlike Bedouins. Since Thatcher was familar with Bush's racistcontempt for Arabs and other dark-skinned peoples, which she emphatically shared, she would also (^)
have laid great stress on the figure of Saddam Hussein and the threat he posed to Anglo-Saxon
interests. The Tavistock profile would have included how threatened Bush felt in his psycho-sexual
impotence by tough customers like Saddam, whom nobody had ever referred to as little Lord
Fauntleroy.
At this moment in the Gulf crisis, the only competent political-military estimate of Iraqi intentions
was that Saddam Hussein had no intent of going beyond Kuwait, a territory to which Baghdad had a
long-standing claim, arguing that the British Empire had illegally established its secret protectorate
over the southern part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra in 1899. Thad no desire to become embroiled with Saudi Arabia was repeated during the first week of thehis estimate that Iraq
crisis by such qualified experts as former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Aikens, and by
the prominent French military leader Gen. Lacaze. Even General Schwarzkopf though it highly
unlikely that Saddam would move against Saudi Arabia.
In her public remarks in Aspen, Thatcher began the new phase in the racist demonization of
Saddam Hussein by calling his actions "intolerable" in a way that Syrian and Israeli occupations of
other countries' lands seemingly were not. She asserted that "a collective and effective will of the
nations belonging to the UN" would be necessary to deal with the crisis. Thatcher's travelling
entourage from the Foreign Office had come equipped with a strategy to press for mandatoryeconomic sanctions and possible mandatory military action against Iraq under the provisions of (^)
Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Soon Bush's entourage had also picked up this new fad.
Bush had now changed his tune markedly. He had suddenly and publicly re-acquired his military
options. When asked about his response, he stated:
We're not ruling any options in but we're not ruling any options out.
Bush also revealed that he had told the Arab leaders with whom he had been in contact during the
morning that the Gulf crisis "had gone beyond simply a regional dispute because of the nakedaggression that violates the United Nations charter." These formulations were I.D. format Thatcher-
speak. Bush condemned Saddam for "his intolerable behavior," again parrotting Thatcher's line.
Bush was now "very much concerned" about the safety of other small Gulf states. Bush also
referred to the hostage question, saying that threats to American citizens would "affect the United
States in a very dramatic way because I view a fundamental responsibility of my presidency [asbeing] to protect American citzens." Bush added that he had talked with Thatcher about British
proposals to press for "collective efforts" by members of the United Nations against Iraq. The Iraqi
invasion was a "totally unjustified act," Bush went on. It was now imperative that the "international
community act together to ensure that Iraqi forces leave Kuwait immediately. Bush revealed that he
and his advisors were now examing the "next steps" to end the crisis. Bush said he was "somewhatheartened" by his telephone conversations with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussein of (^)
Jordan, and Gen. Ali Abdallah Salib of Yemen.
There is every reason to believe that Bush's decision to launch US military intervention and war
was taken in Aspen, under the hypnotic influence of Thatcher. Any residual hesitancy displayed in