George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

heated words, but this was to enforce security measures...taken in accord with the
American security services." He denied that any submachine gun was ever pointed at
Reed. [fn 68] Magnin said the Geneva police would not apologize, and later it was indeed
the US which backed down.
On November 30, UN Security Council, now reduced to a discredited tool of the Anglo-
Americans, voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. This piece of
infamy was labelled resolution 648 and passed with twelve assenting votes against the no
votes of Cuba and Yemen, with the People's Republic of China abstaining. (International
jurists later pointed out that according to the text of the UN Charter, which requires the
positive votes of all five permanent members to approve substantive resolutions, the
resolution had not passed, and that in acting on it the UN had entered a phase of anarchy
and lawlessness.) Iraq was given 47 days to leave Kuwait, and this ultimatum was to
expire on January 15. Bush clearly hoped that this resolution could be used to silence his
Congressional critics.
But in the meantime, Bush's path to war was beset with troubles on the domestic front.
The ghoulish Scowcroft and other Bush spokesmen had been attempting to whip up war
sentiment with wildly exaggerated reports about Iraq's nuclear preparations; these
accounts, like the later alleged findings of "UN inspector" David Kay, failed to
distinguish between peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy; the name of this game
was technological apartheid. This campaign had evoked much skepticism: "Bush's
Atomic Red Herring" was the title of one op-ed in the New York Times.
Anti-war sentiment now crystallized around the hearings being held by Sam Nunn's
Senate Armed Services Committee. Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral William J. Crowe and General David C. Jones, urged a policy of continued
reliance on the sanctions. They were soon joined by former Secretary of Defense James
R. Schlesinger, Gen. William Odom, and other figures of past regimes. Bush's principal
support came from the croaking voice of Henry Kissinger, who was for war as soon as
practicable. These were the days when King Fahd flirted briefly with the idea of a
negotiated settlement, before he was reminded by the State Department that he ruled an
occupied country. "Once Again: What's the Rush?" asked the New York Times of
November 29. Bush wanted the Congress to pass a resolution giving him a blank check to
wage war, but he hesitated to set off a debate that might go on all the way to January 15
and beyond, and in which he risked being beaten. After all, Bush was still refusing to
negotiate.
Now, on Friday, November 30, Bush executed the cynical tactic that would ultimately
paralyze his craven domestic opposition and clear the way to war: he made a fake offer of
negotiations with Iraq:
However, to go the extra mile for peace, I will issue an invitation to Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz to come to Washington at a mutually convenient time during the latter part of
the week of December 10th to meet with me. And I'll invite ambassadors of several of
our coalition partners in the gulf to join me in that meeting.