Diplomats Were Misled by Saddam's 'Cordial' Manner -- Bernhard Zand, Spiegel Online
Did one clumsy statement by the US ambassador in Iraq trigger the first Gulf War? The leaked US cables show diplomats failed to pick up signs that Saddam Hussein was preparing to invade Kuwait, and that they painted his regime in a consistently favorable light in the years leading up to the conflict.
On the morning of July 25, 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein called in the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. It was her first meeting with Saddam and it lasted two hours. And will likely go down in history as one of the most controversial incidents in American diplomacy.
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My Comment: Going down the memory hole is (at times) interesting. But I always believed that Saddam Hussein was determined to invade Kuwait .... U.S. objections or not. I also believed that he underestimated what would be the response to his invasion .... he probably thought that no one had the guts to stand up to him. We now know that he was completely wrong.
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