George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Either [Saddam Hussein] gets out of Kuwait soon or we and our allies will remove him
by force and he will go down to defeat with all the consequences. He has been warned.
[fn 61]
Yet again, the United States was to be drawn into a useless and genocidal war as the tail
on the British imperial kite.
And so, flaunting his vicious contempt for the democratic process, on Thursday
November 8, just two days after the election, Bush made what any serious, intelligent
person must have recognized as a declaration of preemptive war in the Gulf:
After consultation with King Fahd and our other allies I have today directed the secretary
of defense to increase the size of US forces committed to Desert Shield to ensure that the
coalition has an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary to achieve
our common goals. Towards this end we will continue to dicuss the possibility of both
additional allied force contributions and appropriate United Nations actions. Iraq's
brutality, aggression, and violations of international law cannot be allowed to succeed.
[fn 62]
For those who had ever believed Bush's verbal declarations, here was an entirely new
policy, advanced without the slightest motivation. Bush argued that the current US troop
stregnth of 230,000 was enough to defend Saudi Arabia, but that was no longer good
enough. Bush's only argument was that gradual strangulation by sanctions might take too
long. Reporters pointed out that Thatcher had threatened to use military force the day
before. Did Bush want war? "I would love to see a peaceful resolution to this question,
and that's what I want." Some of the more lucid minds had now figured out that Bush was
indeed a pathological liar.
For the rest of the month of November, a modest wave of anti-war sentiment was
observed in the United States, some of it coming from Democrats of the strangler faction
who had never wavered in their devotion to evil. On Sunday, November 11 Sen. Sam
Nunn questioned Bush's rush to war. But Nunn did not call for a denial of funds to wage
war on the model of the Hatfield-McGovern amendment which had finally tied Nixon's
hands in Vietnam. Nunn was a leader of the strangler group, urging reliance on the
sanctions. James Reston wrote in the New York Times, that "Bush's comparison of
Hussein to Hitler, a madman with superior military forces in the center of industrial
Europe, is ridiculous." "Saying 'My President, right or wrong,' in such circumstances, is a
little like saying, 'my driver, drunk or sober,' and not many passengers like to go that far."
[fn 63] The following day, under a headline reading "Tide against war grows at home,
abroad," the Washington Times carried a warning from New York Senator Moynihan: "If
George Bush wants his presidency to die in the Arabian desert, he's going at it very
steadily and as if it were a plan. He will wreck our military, he will wreck his
administration, and he'll spoil the chance to get a collective security system working. It
breaks the heart." Sen. Kerrey of Oklahoma declared himself "not convinced this
administration will do everything in its power to avoid war. And if ever there was an
avoidable war, it is this one."