Source: Wayne Independent and Union Daily Times via Antiwar.com
Credits: Jason Ditz
Dated: 2011-01-20

[ Emilie says : For those who have forgotten, this proves that Iraq told the truth - and President George H. W. Bush and the United States lied about this memorandum, lied about the fact that they gave a green flag to Iraq to invade Kuwait, and lied about the casus belli for the first Gulf War to the UN. If four successive administrations could lie about this, which has lead to the death of over a million people in years of war and sanctions, to the American people, and lie that this document was classified for "security" reasons, what else can they lie about? Or rather, what might they be trusted to tell the truth about? ]

Glaspie Memo Refutes Claims Leaked Docs Were Classified for ‘Security’

The most sought-after State Department document of the past several decades, the infamous Glaspie Memo, was recently released by WikiLeaks. The memo details a conversation between Ambassador April Glaspie and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, exactly one week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and Glaspie’s reassurances to Hussein both of enduring American friendship and America’s disinterest in the Kuwaiti border dispute. In short, it confirmed decades of suspicion that Glaspie had, in the meeting, given Saddam Hussein the impression that the United States was giving him the green light for the invasion. [ Emilie : Which is exactly what the Iraqis said. ]

The revelation, which puts the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in a decade of post-war sanctions and the even greater numbers killed in the 2003 US invasion in a new, decidedly unseemly light, and does enormous service to historians. More importantly, however, the release of a document that was still officially secret 20 plus years and three presidents later shattered the enduring myth that these documents are classified to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Rather, the classification is done to keep the American public from knowing the truth, and WikiLeaks is doing us a great service in their release.

The Glaspie Memo’s existence has been long speculated about, and the real contents were what many had long suspected. The official title of the cable, “Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush” only tells part of the story, as Ambassador Glaspie clearly, repeatedly expresses US support for the Iraqi dictator, expressed support for the Egypt-brokered talks between Iraq and Kuwait later that week, and expresses absolutely no opposition when Saddam suggests that he might act unilaterally if the talks didn’t show any progress – indeed Glaspie informs Saddam that “we took no position on these Arab affairs.”

The revelation would be damning to the George H.W. Bush Administration and are doubly shameful when one considers that, just a week after Glaspie’s reassurances the US embarked on a policy of hostility and sanctions that continues to this day, has cost over a million lives and still has 50,000 US troops inside Iraq.

Yet when we are told that these sorts of memos are classified for “National Security” reasons it clearly does not hold weight. There is no “enemy” this is being kept from. The Glaspie Memo’s contents show a disingenuous US policy toward Iraq that spanned several administrations, and the decision to keep these sorts of documents “secret” decades later reveals a complicity in these policies which would continue indefinitely.

It is not, then, some mythical enemy that these documents were classified to keep in the dark, but the American public itself, which would never accept these despicable policies were they aware of them. From both Bush Administrations to the Clinton and Obama Administrations, the policy was designed to deceive the American public, and the bipartisan outrage against WikiLeaks is the natural reaction to having been caught out in their lies. The jig is up, and the calls for censorship, prosecution, even execution reflects the level of embarrassment one might be expected to feel at the revelation to the American public that these administrations carried out a decades-long campaign of mass murder against the Iraqi people entirely on the basis of diplomatic ambiguity by one ambassador over 20 years ago.

We were never meant to know this, nor are we ever meant to have known the contents of some quarter million additional documents yet to be released. There will undoubtedly be many more revelations which will make us uncomfortable about the way the US government does business, and many more condemnations by President Obama et al stemming from it.

But I would urge the American public not to find succor in the bipartisan furore against the notion of a free press. Instead of being angry that a whistleblower has shamed the US government by making its crimes a matter of public record, let us instead direct our anger where it belongs, at the officials whose crimes we are now discovering.

Source: Press TV
Credits: Uncredited
Dated: 2011-01-03

[ Emilie says : As far as I can determine, there are no significant errors, omissions or contradictions in the following piece. This largely conforms to Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article in the January/February 2003 edition of Foreign Policy that Saddam approached the U.S. to find out how it would react to an invasion into Kuwait. Along with Glaspie's comment that "'[W]e have no opinion on the Arab–Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.' The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had 'no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.' The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did. Foreign Policy Jan/Feb 2003, "An unnecessary war" (134): 54. ]

Leaked Glaspie memo: US gave green light for Iraq to invade Kuwait

One of the crown jewels of secret pre-Gulf War negotiations was unveiled tonight when the notorious Glaspie Memo, or as it is now known 90BAGHDAD423, was released by WikiLeaks.

The cable, whose official title was "Saddam’s Message of Friendship to President Bush" details the meeting between US Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, just a week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The meeting has long been a matter of speculation, as it had long been speculated that comments by Glaspie had led Saddam to believe that the United States was giving them the green light to invade Kuwait if diplomacy failed.

The memo reveals indeed Hussein expressing concern about the Bush Administration’s position on Iraq owing to its participation in military exercises with the United Arab Emirates and pledges to “defend its allies” in the region. He complained the US pledges were making Kuwait and the UAE refuse to negotiate with Iraq. He also expressed concern about negative media coverage in the US, which Ambassador Glaspie assured him did not reflect US policy and singled out a Diane Sawyer report on “nuclear bomb triggers” for condemnation.

Rather Glaspie assured Saddam of Bush’s friendship and expressed support for the negotiations being set up by Hosni Mubarak for the weekend of July 28-30. She also explicitly said the United States took no position on the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. Hussein assured that no action would be taken against Kuwait if the negotiations showed some progress, which seemed to suit the US at the time.

But the talks didn’t accomplish anything and by August 2 Iraq was invading Kuwait. Within hours the mutual friendship was completely torn up and US officials were railing against Iraq. A few months later the US invaded for the first time, sparking invasions, decades of enmity, sanctions which killed massive numbers of Iraqi civilians and, eventually, a full US occupation which continues to this day.

HIGHLIGHTS

“ON THE BORDER QUESTION, SADDAM REFERRED TO THE 1961 AGREEMENT AND A "LINE OF PATROL" IT HAD ESTABLISHED. THE KUWAITIS, HE SAID, HAD TOLD MUBARAK IRAQ WAS 20 KILOMETERS "IN FRONT" OF THIS LINE. THE AMBASSADOR SAID THAT SHE HAD SERVED IN KUWAIT 20 YEARS BEFORE; THEN, AS NOW, WE TOOK NO POSITION ON THESE ARAB AFFAIRS.” cable 90BAGHDAD4237, Wikileaks.

“AMBASSADOR RESUMED HER THEME, RECALLING THAT THE [US] PRESIDENT HAD INSTRUCTED HER TO BROADEN AND DEEPEN OUR RELATIONS WITH IRAQ.” cable 90BAGHDAD4237, Wikileaks

“WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT THE [US] PRESIDENT HAS VERY RECENTLY REAFFIRMED HIS DESIRE FOR A BETTER RELATIONSHIP AND HAS PROVEN THAT BY, FOR EXAMPLE, OPPOSING SANCTIONS BILLS.” cable 90BAGHDAD4237, Wikileaks

FACTS & FIGURES

Saddam Hussein also received an explicit green light from the US to invade Iran, a war which lasted 8 years and killed hundreds of thousands of people:

In July 1979 Saddam Hussein, in a meeting with three CIA officers in Amman, Jordan, received a green light from Washington to invade Iran. Source: PBS, Consortium News

This was later confirmed by President Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, who in 1981 after a visit to Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia wrote in a classified memo "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd." Consortium News

In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, as special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to improve the relations between the two countries.

According to David Newton, former ambassador to Baghdad, "fundamentally, the policy (of supporting Iraq in the war) was justified….We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible." CBS

Iraq repeatedly used banned chemical weapons against Iran as well as the Iraqi city of Halabja killing five thousand civilians. An investigation by the Senate Banking Committee done in 1994 showed that dozens of biological agents were shipped to Iraq during the 1980s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The report identifies 70 shipments from the US to Iraq over three years, adding "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program." Source: "U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War," United States Senate, 103rd Congress, 2nd Session May 25, 1994.

In 1998 after the gassing of the Iraqi city of Halabja by Saddam Hussein, with the help of several congressmen the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988" was passed in the Senate unanimously to sanction Iraq for the genocide, however the Reagan administration, including Collin Powell the National Security Advisor at the time, pressured and eventually succeeded in killing the bill in the House of Representatives. Former ambassador Peter Galbraith who was the Senate’s Iraq expert later claimed "Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the national security advisor who orchestrated Ronald Reagan’s decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds." Source: Rampton & Stauber, "Weapons of Mass Deception", 2003.