Iraq, Kuwait, and the Gulf War
By Larry
Romanoff, March 24, 2023
President
George H.W. Bush (second from right) meets with Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney (third from left) and military advisors General Norman Schwarzkopf
(second from left) and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell (right) at the
Pentagon to discuss the Gulf crisis, August 15, 1990.Gary
Cameron/Reuters Source
Between
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lies one of our world's original 'cradles of
civilisation' - the land that used to be known as Mesopotamia, home of
the rulers of Sumeria, Akkadia and Babylon, names that
even today evoke images of wealth and a high level of development. We now know
this land as Iraq, but the wealth and development are gone. Iraq today is an
impoverished and pathetic shadow of its former self, broken, betrayed,
destroyed, embroiled in civil war. Iraq has disappeared as an independent
nation, having become a permanent Jewish colony under US military control, a
country now without a future. I have dealt with Iraq in other essays so I will
limit my comments here to the portion of history directly related to Kuwait and
the Gulf War.
The
area had become part of the British Mandate, carved up by the Western powers
without regard for the native civilisations that had lived there for millennia,
simply partitioned for the benefit of the imperial powers, including the
granting of half of Palestine to the Jews to form their homeland - and thereby
in total setting the stage for 60 years of bitter and unsolvable conflicts.
With the imminent crumbling of the Ottoman Empire after the First War, and with
the knowledge that large oil reserves were abundant in the area, Britain wanted
to control many of the pieces on the Middle East checkerboard. France and
Britain freely dismantled the Ottoman Empire and the Arab nations for their own
colonial purposes, creating among other things the Iraq Petroleum Company with
95% of the shares going to Britain, France, and the US.
Wikipedia
tells us Kuwait was "a sheikhdom which gained independence from the
Khalidi Emirate of Al Hasa under Sabah I bin Jaber in the year 1752",[1] but
that was never really true. This is the Western official narrative that lies to
cover up all its past sins. Instead of returning Kuwait to Iraq, the West
granted the sheikdom its "independence", thus setting the stage yet
one more time for future wars. And, in 2021, everyone celebrated that
"Kuwait marks 60 years of independence from Britain", with no mention
of Iraq, as if Kuwait had somehow always "belonged" to Britain.[2] And
of course the UK Guardian was there to celebrate.[3]
A youthful King Faisal in the company of HM Queen Elizabeth II during a
state visit to Great Britain. Source
Thanks
to the West's revisionist history, few readers are aware that Kuwait had always
been part of Iraq, a province, or at least subject to Iraqi suzerainty. But
Britain wanted a deep-water naval port in the area and so the British severed
Kuwait from the rest of Iraq, creating a new British colony with artificial
boundaries that had no basis in history or geography. Iraq's King Faisal
never accepted this amputation of the Kuwait district or the denial of Iraqi
access to the Persian Gulf, and for most Iraqis it was a permanent symbol of
humiliation at the hands of the British. Deep resistance to the separation
persisted, and Kuwait experienced a popular uprising in the 1930s, for
reunification with Iraq, but the Iraqi King was soon found dead, assassinated
by British agents. Still, Iraq and the Arab world generally, resented this
partition of Kuwait as yet another subordination to British and Jewish colonial
interests, and there were intensified appeals for the return of Kuwait to Iraq.
However, the colonialists responded with yet another "regime change".
Unfortunately,
the world's knowledge of Iraq was limited to things we read in the Western
media, the only certainty being that the information was untrue. We heard all
the stories about Saddam Hussein being a brutal dictator, a tyrant and
murderer, and more. We were told Saddam was responsible for the New York WTC
attack on 9-11. We learned about his "weapons of mass destruction"
- the dreaded WMDs - and read stories of how he gassed hundreds of thousands of
his own people and buried their bodies in mass graves. But most of us have
already forgotten that no evidence was ever found of any of these items or
events. From all the available evidence, the accusations of mass murders were
just as false as those of the nuclear weapons and biological programs, all spin
produced by the US propaganda machine in preparation for a regime change. In
fact, Iraq was a safe and progressive secular nation with great prospects for
wealth and success. Under Saddam, and contrary to Western propaganda, Iraq had
free education including university, free health care, food packages widely
available for anyone in need, a high level of enlightenment and women's rights
far superior to anything in the Middle East including Israel, and widespread
religious tolerance. Iraq also provided a home for a great many Palestinian
refugees fleeing the Jewish genocide in their homeland. The truth of Iraq
was very different from the narrative produced by the US war-marketing machine.
However,
a larger problem remained, which leads us back to Kuwait. Most Westerners
believe Kuwait to be an exceptionally rich little sheikdom, but that was never
really true and, contrary to popular belief, Kuwait has no oil. The important
fact is that Kuwait's border happens to abut Iraq's massive Rumaila oil field,
and this was the source of its riches. While Iraq was distracted by its war
with Iran, Kuwait had gradually moved its border with Iraq sufficiently far to
gain access to Iraq's oil. But this still wasn't sufficient because the oil
fields were still very much in Iraqi territory.
If
you have never been in the oil business, you won't know what 'directional
drilling' is, so let me tell you. When we think of drilling an oil well, we
assume the drilling is vertical, with the drill pipe going straight down into
the ground, but that doesn't always happen. Oil wells can be drilled almost
horizontally. You can see in the photo that the drill pipe is entering the
ground nearly horizontally. There are many good reasons for doing this
directional drilling, and some bad ones. One of the latter occurs when I have
land that contains no oil, but that is next to your very large and profitable
oil field. The easy solution for me is to drill from my land at a shallow angle
into your oil reservoir, and steal all your oil. The Kuwaitis proceeded to do just
that, and it proved so profitable that the Kuwaiti Sheik, with the support of
the Americans, purchased the Santa Fe Drilling Corporation of Alhambra,
California, for $2.3 billion, and proceeded to use its directional drilling
equipment to gain access to Iraq's oil field. These directional drilling rigs
can be disguised, hidden in bushes or a small forest of trees, or even
buildings, and if you aren't paying attention, you will never know that
someone is stealing your oil.
But
Saddam Hussein was paying attention, and he did know that Kuwait was siphoning
off millions of barrels of his oil, and had by that time effectively stolen
billions of dollars’ worth of Iraq oil under the protection of the Western
powers. Diplomatic entreaties, persuasion, discussions, pleas to the West for
intervention, all availed nothing. Finally, in September of 1990, Saddam had
several meetings with official representatives of the US State Department where
he outlined his options and told the US he saw only a military solution to the
problem. In each case, he specifically asked what would be the US response if
he found this option necessary. Those meetings were recorded and documented,
and transcripts were produced which were not disputed by the US State
Department. In one case, US Ambassador April Glaspie informed Hussein
that "We have no opinion on...conflicts like your border disagreement with
Kuwait".[4][5] She
reiterated this position several times, and added, "Secretary of State
James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this
instruction." Other responses were identical; the US
officially informed Iraq that it had no opinion and would take no action if
Iraq involved itself in what the US called "a local dispute".
In
any case, Kuwait as a "country" in no way deserved defending, and not
only because it was a thief. The ruling family installed by the British was
dictatorial and brutal, suppressing the small population and intimidating
journalists into silence and foreign workers into indentured servitude and
near-slavery.
A
week before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, two other State Secretary spokespersons,
Margaret Tutwiler and John Kelly both stated publicly that "the
United States was not obligated to come to Kuwait's aid if it were
attacked." As well, Kelly testified before the House
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that the United States had "no
defense treaty relationship with any Gulf country".[6][7] So,
it wasn't exactly a surprise that Saddam believed he could reclaim his province
of Kuwait and stop the oil thefts. President Bush's White House appeared to
provide him with full support and guarantees of immunity. Acting on this
assurance, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and quickly gained control of the
country. But this had no sooner happened than the US, with trumped-up UN
support, demanded the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces. In a state of
shock, Iraq made attempts to negotiate a withdrawal, but these were rebuffed by
the US and it was then discovered that American military forces in the region
had already rehearsed battle plans to repel an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In
fact, George Bush and the US State Department had double-crossed Saddam and
used his action as an excuse for an invasion of Iraq they had already planned.
They set him up, led him to believe he had their support, and then betrayed
him. It was reported that Saddam had put out a hit contract on George Bush for
the double-cross. No evidence was presented to support this assertion but, if
it were true, it would hardly be a surprise.
Shortly
thereafter, the US and other allied forces launched a devastating attack on
Iraq and its armed forces in Kuwait. The US media portrayed the Iraqi military
as a global threat and as a formidable military opponent, but Iraq was still
weak from its war with Iran and the US attack was one-sided in the extreme. The
US sent more than 500,000 troops to the war, but incurred only 148 deaths, many
from "friendly fire", while Iraq suffered at least 100,000 deaths and
another 300,000 wounded. The intense war destroyed 80% of Iraq's total
weaponry, and the US was unremitting in its savagery. There were confirmed
reports that an Iraqi artillery battalion consisting of 150,000 men and a large
number of vehicles and armaments had ceased their retreat and were waving white
flags in surrender when the US ordered an all-out air strike and killed
virtually the entire battalion. Another 12,000 who wanted to surrender were
massacred in their trenches and left buried by the US in mass graves. This
was famed as Iraq’s “Highway of Death”, where the Americans literally
slaughtered 150,000 soldiers who had surrendered and were retreating. [8][9][10][11] But
all we heard from the Jewish media was that "The
international community expressed outrage" at the "forced
annexation" of Kuwait, and the entire world
demanded that Iraq be removed and "oil-rich
Kuwait" have its "sovereignty"
restored. Every word was a lie.
The Allied coalition consisted of Afghanistan, Argentina,
Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia,
Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Italy,
Kuwait, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway,
Oman, Pakistan,Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal,
Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Turkey,
the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Two pictures of Iraq’s Highway of Death (Source: Reddit + Amusing Planet)
But
it wasn't only the Iraqi military that the US wanted to destroy. Most of the
bombing was intended to damage or destroy Iraq's infrastructure. After the
US ceased the initial hostilities, a reporter described the circumstances
confronting the civilian population of Iraq: "A land that once
had high levels of literacy and an advanced system of health-care has been
devastated by the West. Its social structure is in ruins, its people are
denied the basic necessities of existence. The targets included water treatment
plants, sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, oil refineries
and communications centers." According to UN, some
60 per cent of the population had no regular access to clean water, and over 80
per cent of schools had been destroyed or needed substantial repairs. The
result was absolute devastation for the civilian population, in violation of
the Geneva conventions and all international law that prohibits deliberately
targeting economic and social facilities.
Many
of us have seen the dramatic IMAX movies of firefighters attempting to
extinguish the oilwell fires in Kuwait, and we were all told of how Saddam, in
a fit of pique at being driven out of Kuwait, set its wells on fire in
defiance. But in the years since the war, the American Veterans Association
has received numerous reports from veterans stating that US forces were
responsible for setting the oil well fires. They state in detailed accounts
how special teams moved behind the retreating Iraqi forces but ahead of the
advancing Americans, and how they set explosive and incendiary charges on the
well heads which were remotely detonated by their commanders as US forces
advanced. They claim they were ordered to do this in order to sway public
opinion and remove doubts about the evilness of Saddam's regime.
They claim that one month before the declaration of the Iraq war, Secretary
of State James Baker signed a now-declassified US Army report
that describes in detail how extensively Kuwait would be destroyed, how the oil
wells would be set on fire, and then how it would all be rebuilt 'better than before'. It
is their contention that only President Bush and his inner circle of corporate
friends like Halliburton stood to profit from the ravages inflicted on Kuwait's
petroleum installations. They claim that vast personal fortunes were made from
destroying and then rebuilding Kuwait's oil infrastructure. The oil
firefighting companies, the construction and services companies, and many more,
earned tens of billions of dollars from this gigantic fraud.
One
article written by investigative reporter Jon Rappoport, who personally
interviewed American soldiers after this event, wrote: This veteran . . .
states, "We were mustered into the briefing tent at which point a gentleman
who I first had thought to be an American began to brief us on the operation
[to burn the oil fields]. [12] I
was concerned because he was not wearing a US uniform and insignias. . . . may
also be implying that the operation to burn the oil fields was not, at the
highest levels, a US government plot, although it used small groups of US
soldiers. The briefer may have represented more shadowy power players." And
this takes us back to the bankers in The City of London, which is where
this atrocity certainly originated.
Having
accomplished this first step in damaging Iraq, the US then pushed a series of
economic sanctions through the UN that was intended to strangle the country and
make it ripe for a final takeover. One of the most inhumane acts was the
targeting of Iraq's water supplies and water purification systems during the
invasion. Then the sanctions were applied to all replacement supplies and parts, to
ensure that Iraq could not repair its water system, a process deliberately
planned to degrade the country's water supply and deny the population access to
clean water. Small children were the most susceptible to diseases from contaminated
water, and the death toll from this one source has been widely estimated at
more than 500,000 children in only a few years. The Americans were
unbelievably callous about the loss of life.
I
cannot avoid mention here of Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of
State, the most prolific baby-killer in the history of the world, who
engineered the destruction of Iraq’s water facilities and sanctions to prevent
replacement or repair, and who was single-handedly responsible for the
deaths of at least 500,000 infants during the inter-war period, to say
nothing of the elderly and infirm. In a famous TV interview, Albright was told
by Leslie Stahl on the TV program 60 Minutes that more than half a million
children had died because the sanctions she designed and instituted, to which
she replied that she thought "the price was worth it".
In other words, killing half a million children was a small price to pay when grooming a
nation for conquest. [13] You
can watch this insane psychopath here on YouTube, making her famous statement.[14]
It’s
worth noting that the New York Times gave Albright a glowing obituary
for her contributions to humanity, as it does for all Jews, regardless of the
human atrocities they commit. "Admirers said she had a star quality,
radiating practicality, versatility and a refreshingly cosmopolitan flair. She
was a diminutive presence with an assured style: impeccably tailored and
perfectly coifed, with touches of gold or pearl in her brooches, an amused
smile for the cognoscenti and eyes that missed nothing."[15]
And
that final conquest was in the planning years prior to 9-11. After the US
invaded Afghanistan, it quickly turned its sights on Iraq and began the
standard American process of using the media to demonise a nation it intends to
invade. Americans and the world were fed a constant diet of stories, each more
horrid than the other, about the evils of the Iraqi government. The world was
told Iraq possessed nuclear weapons which could be launched on 15 minutes
notice against Israel and the US, that Iraq possessed enormous quantities of
biological and chemical weapons and was prepared to unleash them in a
pre-emptive war. Every claim was later proved to be a lie,
a complete fabrication, but the media onslaught served to turn the American
population and much of the Western world against Iraq, sufficient to justify
yet another "regime change".
The
final Iraq war was presented first at locating and disarming Iraq's nuclear weapons,
then when that proved to be false, the story was amended to "introducing
democracy to Iraq". Democracy indeed. It would be difficult
to cite many other historical examples of one nation destroying another so
completely, crushing and perverting virtually every aspect of their society and
humanity. Almost all public services, including electricity, water, sanitation
systems, were almost entirely destroyed by US bombing, deliberately destroyed.
Moreover, the eight years of economic sanctions were called (by the US) "the
most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of
mankind", creating widespread devastation of every aspect of the lives of
the Iraqi population. The US has a long record
of bombing nations, reducing entire cities to rubble, destroying the
infrastructure and ruining the lives of those the bombs didn’t kill. And doing
nothing afterward to repair the damage, leaving a shattered and impoverished
population to fend for themselves as best they can while the US multinationals
begin their looting of the nation's resources. Iraq is just one more example
of the apparently limitless American and Zionist appetite for war and profit.
Following
the invasion and destruction, in a bid to deflect some of the international
criticism, the US government claimed it had been "misled by bad
intelligence", that the CIA, Israel's Mossad, the NSA and other agencies
simply misread the facts and arrived at incorrect conclusions. Of
course, those admissions of having invaded and destroyed a nation for
absolutely no justifiable reason did not lead to an apology or evacuation.
Instead, the US simply continued on its planned course of colonisation. Although,
to be fair, George Bush did receive at least one bit of "bad
intelligence", this being assurance from the Jewish neo-con and Zionist
Paul Wolfowitz that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to
three years after the invasion. Wolfowitz was dead wrong, of course, but he was
nevertheless rewarded for his sterling service by being given the position of
presidency of the World Bank.
The
US made much of claims that Saddam had expelled UN weapons inspectors searching
for the so-called WMDs, but he had never done any such thing. The head of the
inspection team was later widely criticised for ordering his inspectors to
leave Baghdad in anticipation of the US attack. And it has been well
documented that Iraq's accusation of the weapons inspectors being used as spies
in preparation for the already-planned US invasion, was very true. The
UN and US so-called weapons inspectors were not searching for things they
already knew didn't exist, but were in fact advance scouts for the US
military, obtaining accurate GPS coordinates for infrastructure locations the
US wanted to destroy. Everything about the US invasion of Iraq
was a lie, perpetrated in the dirtiest manner and with the full compliance of
the Western media.
Incinerated Iraqi soldier on the highway of death.This photo was taken by Ken
Jarecke, his quote:
“If I don’t photograph
this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on TV”.
"We subjected Iraq to the most intense aerial bombing campaign ever
waged in the history of war. We deliberately destroyed their civilian and
industrial infrastructure. We fired almost a million rounds of
Depleted Uranium ammunition at them. We imposed economic
sanctions on them that killed 5000 people every month. Our governments lied
about it all, and the media, on the whole, either kept quiet or faithfully
acted as their mouthpiece. Our governments and their media outlets did
everything they possibly could to keep the truth from the public."
Among the Westerners to visit Iraq after the war, John Pilger produced a
famous film titled "Paying the Price", and Miriam Ryle
produced a great documentary titled "Voices from Iraq" that
documented the terrible conditions there, but no American TV stations would air
her film. US media support for the criminal destruction of Iraq was total.
In
the end, as William Blum so nicely put it, "We must keep in
mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of
Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American
and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile". "What
happened to Iraq was a template for future wars. It was devastatingly simple.
Destroy the means of industrialised civilian life, destroy the water supply and
sanitation system, destroy the electricity supply, freeze their assets, isolate
the country with sanctions, gag the media, then sit back and relax whilst an
entire nation degenerates into epidemics, poverty and starvation. And
as a shattered future generation emerges, you will find the people more
malleable and receptive to your 'influence'." "The Iraqi
people see clearly that the greatest enemy to their well-being and culture is
the Western value system itself. They know what it really means to be the
target of Western humanitarian bombing, the blatant cruelty and insanity of
American policy."
Defense
Secretary Richard B. Cheney, at a breakfast with
reporters, said every Iraqi target was "perfectly legitimate"
and added, "If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same
thing." Source
There is much more to the tale of Iraq than described here. The
next two chapters provide a more adequate description.
*
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has
been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150
foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well
as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired
management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions
in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export
business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University,
presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr.
Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books
generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors
to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
*
NOTES
[1] Sheikhdom of Kuwait
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikhdom_of_Kuwait
[2] Kuwait marks 60 years of
independence from Britain
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/kuwait/kuwait-marks-60-years-of-independence-from-britain-1.80044884
[3] Independence for Kuwait
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1961/jun/20/fromthearchive
[4] APRIL GLASPIE MADE
STATEMENT TO PRES. HUSSEIN LEADING TO FIRST IRAQI-AMERICAN WAR
https://www.americanussr.com/american-ussr-april-glaspie.html#:~:text=April%20Glaspie%20April%20Glaspie%20obtained%20notoriety%20for%20mis-advising,with%20his%20people%20lasting%20more%20than%2030%20years.
[25] Gulf War Documents:
Meeting between Saddam Hussein and US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie
https://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-between-saddam-hussein-and-ambassador-to-iraq-april-glaspie/31145
[6] . . . AND THE TALE OF A
TRANSCRIPT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/17/and-the-tale-of-a-transcript/21babc92-8514-4f14-a47f-9b0ef4a637fe/
[7]
CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF; U.S. Gave Iraq Little Reason Not to Mount Kuwait
Assault
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/23/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-us-gave-iraq-little-reason-not-to-mount-kuwait-assault.html
[8] Iraqi Forces Were
Annihilated While Retreating On 'The Highway Of Death' 25 Years Ago
https://jalopnik.com/iraqi-forces-were-annihilated-while-retreating-on-the-1754611524
[9] Highway of Death, a tragic memory of
the Gulf War
https://www.roadstotravel.net/iraq-highway-of-death/
[10]
Remembering the Iraqi
withdrawal from Kuwait and the Highway of Death
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220225-remembering-the-iraqi-withdrawal-from-kuwait-and-the-highway-of-death/
[11] Highway of Death, the
result of American forces bombing retreating Iraqi forces, Kuwait, 1991
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/highway-death-in-pictures-1991/
[12] Gulf War Vet Group: US
Troops Set Kuwait Oil Fires
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/USsetFires.html#:~:text=The%20American%20Gulf%20War%20Veterans%20Association%2C%20led%20by,Kuwait%20at%20the%20end%20of%20Gulf%20War%20One
[13] Let’s remember Madeleine
Albright for who she really was
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-madeleine-albright-as-who-she-really-was
[14] Madeleine Albright says 500,000 dead Iraqi Children was
"worth it" wins Medal of Freedom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
[15] Madeleine Albright, First
Woman to Serve as Secretary of State, Dies at 84
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/madeleine-albright-dead.html
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai,
2023
