I also believe that up to the First Gulf War, Saddam had no designs on harming the US. He was our pal when he was fighting Iran. He felt betrayed that the US opposed his going into Kuwait. Some suggest he had designs on Saudi Arabia, but I don’t buy it.
Perhaps, the Sauds had a design.
“I also believe that up to the First Gulf War, Saddam had no designs on harming the US. He was our pal when he was fighting Iran. He felt betrayed that the US opposed his going into Kuwait. Some suggest he had designs on Saudi Arabia, but I don’t buy it.”
I don’t think Saddam was deluded enough to seek out a fight with the United States. What he wanted was Kuwait, the same as Iraqi rulers before him. He had been receiving help from us in his fight with Iran so he may have thought that we approved of him.
In 1990 Saddam got some sort of ambiguous message from April Glaspie, our ambassador to Iraq, when he was massing troops along the Kuwait border. It didn’t contain an explicit warning to him to pull back and he appears to have taken that as a sign that we wouldn’t do anything if he invaded. It’s not like he was asking our permission, he just figured he could get away with it.
The Saudis were probably pressing us to do something about him.