Gulf War 1

Once again todays episode of democracynow.org gets me in a mood to ramble.

Today they had Joseph Wilson, former Deputy Chief of Mission in Iraq, when the Gulf War started in 1991, and husband to Valerie Plame, the CIA operative whose name was disclosed to the press as a CIA operative (which is a federal crime in the US).

He said a lot of interesting things and an rush transcript of the interview can be read here.

One of the things that caught my special attention was his talk about the buildup to the Gulf war. There he said, quote "he told me that if we did not challenge his conquest of Kuwait, then he would give us all the oil we wanted at a good price, he would serve as America’s policeman in the region, and he would not go on and invade Saudi Arabia".

Woooow ... what an offer ... how could they refuse? Well, I don't know what it was but instead of saying "hey, that sounds good, lets be buddys" Wilson said quote: "Get out of Kuwait, allow all Americans to leave the region, and quit looting American diplomatic properties in Kuwait”, and when that didn't happen they rallied up the UN and launched an attack to ... uhh .. well, to do what? No one really knows by now, but the official story is I think that they wanted to drive Saddam out of Kuwait and help an uprising in Iraq oust Saddam (not the Bath party, just Saddam).

Well, one out of two ain't bad right?

I find this interesting because one of the conspiracy theories about the Gulf War was that the US had turned a blind eye to this invasion to begin with, which is perhaps not so far from the truth considering that the meeting between Wilson and Saddam happened 4 days after the invasion. Well, the conspiracy theory can be read here. Guess I should stop listening to these conspiracy pranksters ... but they are just so much fun! :-)

But this thing about Libby ... what a disgrace I would say. If you listen to what Bush says about why he decided to commute his sentence: "I took this decision very seriously on Mr. Libby. I considered his background, his service to the country, as well as the jury verdict. I felt like the jury verdict ought to stand. And I felt like some of the punishments that the judge determined were adequate should stand. But I felt like the thirty-month sentencing was severe and made a judgment, a considered judgment, that I believe is the right decision to make in this case, and I stand by it.". Well, like we all know then the president relies a lot on his gut feeling in decision making. How good his gut is in making decisions is controversial. I for one don't care for it one bit.