The previous evening, still August 1 in Washington, early reports had indicated some firing along Kuwait’s northern border. It was not unexpected. For days sweeps by the great KH-11 satellites over the northern Gulf had shown the buildup of the Iraqi forces, telling Washington more than the U.S.
ambassador in Kuwait actually knew. The problem was, What were Saddam Hussein’s intentions: to threaten or to invade?
Frantic requests had been sent the previous day to the CIA headquarters at Langley, but the Agency had been less than helpful, turning in “maybe” analyses on the basis of the satellite pictures garnered by the National Reconnaissance Office and political savvy already known to the State Department’s Middle East Division.
“Any half-ass can do that,” growled Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the NSC. “Don’t we have anyone right inside the Iraqi regime?”
The answer to that was a regretful no. It was a problem that would recur for months.
The answer to the conundrum came before tenP.M. , when President George Bush went to bed and took no further calls from Scowcroft. That was after dawn Gulf Time, and the Iraqi tanks were beyond Jahra, entering the northwestern suburbs of Kuwait City.
It was, the participants would recall later, quite a night. There were eight on the videolink, representing the NSC, the Treasury, the State Department, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon. A flurry of orders went out and were implemented. A similar series was coming out of a hastily convened COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room Annex) committee meeting in London, which
was five hours away from Washington but Only two from the Gulf.
Both governments froze all Iraqi financial assets lodged abroad, as well as (with the agreement of the Kuwaiti ambassadors in both cities) all Kuwaiti assets, so that any new puppet government working for Baghdad could not get its hands on the funds. These decisions froze billions and billions of petrodollars.
President Bush was awakened at 4:45A.M. on August 2 to sign the documents. In London, Margaret Thatcher, long up and about and raising seven levels of Cain, had already done the same before going to catch her plane for the States.
Another major step was to hustle together the United Nations Security Council in New York to condemn the invasion and call for an immediate withdrawal by Iraq. This was achieved with Resolution 660, signed at four-thirtyA.M. that same morning.
Around dawn the videolink conference ended, and the participants had two hours to get home, wash, change, shave, and be back at the White House for the eightA.M. full meeting of the NSC, chaired by President Bush in person.
Newcomers at the full meeting included Richard Cheney of Defense, Nicholas Brady of Treasury, and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Bob Kimmitt continued to stand in for the State Department because Secretary James Baker and Deputy Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger were both out of town.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell had arrived back from Florida, bringing with him the general in charge of Central Command, a big burly man of whom more would be heard later. Norman Schwarzkopf was at General Powell’s side when they walked in.
George Bush left the meeting at 9:15A.M. , when Ray and Maybelle Walker were thankfully airborne and somewhere over Saudi Arabia heading northwest for home and safety. The President took a helicopter from the south lawn to Andrews Air Force base, where he transferred to Air Force One and flew to Aspen, Colorado. He was scheduled to give an address on U.S. defense needs. As it turned out, it was an appropriate topic, but the day would be much busier than foreseen.
In midair he took a long call from King Hussein of Jordan, monarch of Iraq’s smaller and much-overshadowed neighbor. The Hashemite King was in Cairo, conferring with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
King Hussein was desperate that the United States give the Arab states a few days to try to sort things out without a war. He himself proposed a four-state conference, including President Mubarak, himself, and Saddam Hussein and as chairman His Majesty King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. He was confident that such a conference would persuade the Iraqi dictator to withdraw from Kuwait peaceably. But he needed three, maybe four days, and no public condemnation of Iraq by any of the nations participant to the conference.
President Bush told him: “You got it. I defer to you.” The unfortunate George had not yet met the lady from London, who was waiting for him in Aspen. They met that evening.
The Iron Lady soon got the impression that her good friend was about to start wavering again. Within two hours she put a broom handle so far up the President’s left trouser leg that it came out near the collar line.
“He cannot, he simply cannot, be allowed to get away with it, George.”
Faced with those flashing blue eyes and the cut-crystal tones slicing through the hum of the air conditioner, George Bush admitted that this was not America’s intention either. His intimates later felt he had been less worried by Saddam Hussein with his artillery and tanks than by that daunting handbag.
On August 3, the United States had a quiet word with Egypt. President Mubarak was reminded just how much his armed forces were dependent on American weaponry, just how much Egypt owed the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and just how much U.S. aid came his way. On August 4 the Egyptian government issued a public statement roundly condemning Saddam Hussein’s invasion.
To the Jordanian King’s dismay but not to his surprise, the Iraqi despot at once refused to go to the Jeddah conference and sit beside Hosni Mubarak under the chairmanship of King Fahd.
For the King of Saudi Arabia it was a brutal snub, delivered within a culture that prides itself on elaborate courtesy. King Fahd, who conceals a shrewd political brain behind an unfailingly gracious persona, was not pleased.
This was one of the two factors that blew away the Jeddah conference. The other was the fact that the Saudi monarch had been shown American photographs taken from space that proved that the Iraqi Army, far from halting its advance, was still in full battle order and moving south toward the Saudi border on the southern fringes of Kuwait.
Would the Iraqis really dare to sweep on and invade Saudi Arabia itself? The arithmetic added up.
Saudi Arabia has the biggest oil reserves in the world. Second comes Kuwait, with over a hundred years of reserves at present production levels. Third is Iraq. By taking Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had reversed the balance. Moreover, ninety percent of Saudi oil wells and reserves are locked into the far northeastern corner of the Kingdom, around Dhahran, Al-Khobar, Dammam, and Jubail, and inland from these ports.
The triangle lay right in the path of the advancing Republican Guard divisions, and the photos proved that more divisions were pouring into Kuwait.
Fortunately, His Majesty never discovered that the photos had been doctored. The divisions close to the border were digging in, but the bulldozers that made this evident had been airbrushed out.
On August 6 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia formally asked U.S. forces to enter the Kingdom for its defense.