George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

A number of aspects of this performance merit underlining. The confusion of Manfred
Woerner with Perez de Cuellar will be the first of a number of such gaffes committed by
Bush over the next few days. "Naked aggression" is once again Thatcher's term. Thatcher
is mentioned twice in a way that suggests that Bush had been on the phone with her again
after leaving Aspen. Indeed, the code word "staunch" towards the end, which for Bush
can only be associated with the British, implies that Bush's entire episode had been
coordinated with Thatcher in advance. In regard to Saddam Hussein, in addition to the
direct contact that was never attempted we have here the beginning of a cascade of verbal
abuse that would continue through the course of the buildup and the war. According to
many observers, the purpose of these gratuitous insults was to make a compromise
settlement through negotiations impossible by casting aspersions on Saddam Hussein's
honor. This might have reflected advice from Arabists of the type known to inhabit the
British Foreign Office. Bush's responses concerning King Hussein of Jordan were very
ominous for the Hashemite monarch, and left no doubt that Bush regarded any Arabsponsored
peaceful solution as an unfriendly act. Indeed, Bush here declared the Arab
solution dead. No greater sabotage of peace efforts in the region could be imagined.
Bush's stress on Kuwait indicates that his subsequent presentation of his troop
deployments as serving the defense of Saudi Arabia was disinformation, and that the US
occupation of Kuwait was his goal all along. Finally, the combination of the manic tone,
the confusion of the two Secretaries General, and the obsessive "I've got to go to work"
repeated three times at the end combine to suggest a state of psychological upheaval, with
the thyroid undoubtedly making its contribution to Bush's flight forward. But, for the
positive side of Bush's ledger, notice that there were no questions about new taxes or Neil
Bush.
"Was Bush's Sunday diatribe staged?", asked the Washington Post some days later. White
House officials denied it. "He did it because he felt that way," said one. "There was no
intention beforehand to assume a posture just for the impact." [fn 43] Dr. Josef Goebbels
was famous for his ability to deliver a speech as if it were a spontaneous emotional
outburst, and the afterward cynically review it point by point and stratagem by stratagem.
There is much evidence that Bush did not possess this degree of lucidity and internal
critical distance.
Bush went into the White House for yet another meeting of the NSC. At this meeting, it
was already a foregone conclusion that there would be a large US military deployment,
although that had never been formally deliberated by the NSC. It had been a solo decision
by Bush. There was now only the formality of Saudi assent.
Monday at the White House was dominated by the presence of Margaret Thatcher at her
staunchest. Thatcher's theme was now that the enforcement of the economic sanctions
voted by the UN would require a naval blockade in which the Anglo-Saxon combined
fleets would play the leading role. Thatcher's first priority was that the sanctions had to
be made to work. But if Washington and London were to conclude that a naval blockade
were necessary for that end, she went on, "you would have to consider such a move."
Thatcher carted out her best Churchillian rhetoric to advertize that Britain already had
one warship stationed in the Persian Gulf, and that two more frigates, one from