George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

AM, Bush was awakened by Scowcroft, who had brought him the executive orders
freezing all Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets in the US. At 8 AM the National Security 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 massive troop 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 flight
to 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
George's feelings of inadequacy when he was denied the love of his cold, demanding
Anglo-Saxon sportswoman 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 Committee. George had to do something to save the embattled
English-speaking peoples, Thatcher might have hinted. Otherwise, he would be letting
down the side in precisely the way which he had always feared would lose him his