George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Bush: Yes, I do. I think this is entirely different, and I think it's a-- I just feel it's what's
needed in terms of helping these people. And so some may interpret it that way; I don't. I
think it's purely humanitarian, and I think representations have been made as recently as
today that they'd be-- you know, that these people would be safe. So I hope it proves that
way. [fn 92]
This decision created an Anglo-American enclave in northern Iraq that expanded during a
period of several weeks before stabilizing. US forces left Iraqi territory by July 15, but
some of them stayed behind as part of a very ominous rapid deployment force jointly
created by the US, the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands and based in
southeast Turkey. This was called Operation Poised Hammer (in British parlance, Sword
of Damocles), and was allegedly stationed to protect the Kurds from future attacks by
Saddam. Many observers noted that this force was optimally positioned to go north and
east as well as south and west, meaning that the Poised Hammer force had to be regarded
as pre-positioned for a possible move into the southern, Islamic belt of the crumbling
Soviet empire.
On April 16 and April 29, Iraq, having complied with most of the cease-fire conditions
imposed by Bush through the UN Security Council, requested that the economic embargo
imposed in early August, 1990 be finally lifted so as to permit the country to buy food,
medicine, and other basic goods on the world market, and to sell oil in order to pay for
them. But Bush's committment to genocide was truly implacable. Bush first obstructed
the Iraqi requests with a debate on the conditions for the payment of Iraqi reparations and
the country's international financial debt, and then stated on May 20: "At this juncture,
my view is we don't want to lift the sanctions as long as [Saddam Hussein] is in power."
In the Congress, Rep. Tim Penny of Minneosta and Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas
offered resolutions to relax the sanctions or to end them entirely, but the Bush machine
blocked every move in that direction. Here Bush risked isolation in the court of world
public opinion. On July 12, the Aga Khan returned from a visit to Iraq to propose that the
sanctions be lifted. The lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were in danger
because of the lack of clean water, food, medicine, and basic health services; during the
summer of 1991, infant mortality in Iraq rose almost 400% over the pre-war period.
The spring of 1991 brought a political signal that was very ominous for Bush's future.
This bad omen for George came in the form of a New York Times op-ed written by
William G. Hyland, the well-known Kissinger clone serving as editor for the magazine
Foreign Affairs, the quarterly organ of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, and
one of the flagship publications of the Eastern Anglophile Liberal Establishment. The
article was entitled "Downgrade Foreign Policy," and appeared on May 20, 1991.
Hyland's thesis was that "The United States has never been less threatened by foreign
forces than it is today. But the unfortunate corollary is that never since the Great
Depression has the threat to domestic well-being been greater." Hyland demanded that
Bush pay more attention to domestic policy, and his proposals for US military
disengagement abroad were radical enough to raise the eyebrows of the London
Financial Times,; which called attention to Hyland's catalogue of Bush's "disastrous