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Tuesday, March 25, 2003
At an anti-war rally in Union Square last week, I had a discussion with one of the guys handing out material. At length, he explained why he was anti-war and I explained why I was for it. The only thing he said that was of any significant interest was to claim that the U.S. had allowed Saddam to invade Kuwait, quoting a female U.S. ambassador as having said to Saddam "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts." This definitely seemed worth pursuing, but I didn't have to look far. In yesterday's column, the WSJ's Robert L. Bartley described the situation thusly:Controversy still swirls, too, around what message the U.S. conveyed to Saddam before his invasion of Kuwait. An Iraqi transcript showed U.S. ambassador April Glaspie telling him eight days before the 1990 invasion, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." She later testified that the Iraqis left out a warning insisting that such disputes be settled in "a non-violvent manner." [Emphasis in the original.] What this makes rather obvious is who is and is not included in the source list for developing anti-war arguments: Iraqi transcripts are, and testimony from U.S. officials is not.
Steven I. Weiss 4:50:00 PM
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