Saddam did NOT try to kill old man Bush

So, let’s go back to suspecting Kuwaiti lies. (See the bottom of the post for possible Kuwaiti motives to set up something like this as an alleged Iraqi assassination attempt, and the ruling al-Sabahs’ past history of lying related to Iraq. Or for the possibility it wasn’t just Kuwait behind this.)

Michael Isikoff, over at Newsweek reports what some of us have known for years:
Saddam Hussein did not try to kill George H.W. Bush in 1993.

Don’t believe me? It’s in the same just-released, albeit only halfway so, Pentagon report that puts Nail No. 942 in the coffin of lies claiming Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. As Isikoff says:

The review, conducted for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, combed through 600,000 pages of Iraqi intelligence documents seized after the fall of Baghdad, as well as thousands of hours of audio- and videotapes of Saddam's conversations with his ministers and top aides. The study found that the IIS kept remarkably detailed records of virtually every operation it planned, including plots to assassinate Iraqi exiles and to supply explosives and booby-trapped suitcases to Iraqi embassies.

But the Pentagon researchers found no documents that referred to a plan to kill Bush. The absence was conspicuous because researchers, aware of its potential significance, were looking for such evidence.

“It was surprising,” said one source familiar with the preparation of the report (who under Pentagon ground rules was not permitted to speak on the record). Given how much the Iraqis did document, “you would have thought there would have been some veiled reference to something about [the plot].”

Isikoff does caveat that the absence of evidence for something is not evidence of its nonexistence.

Those of us who have read alternative accounts of the event from near the time it happened have long suspected the al-Sabah ruling sheikhs of Kuwait made the story up. I mean, the whole thing smelled suspicious from the start. Whiskey smugglers arrested. Their sentences later commuted. And on and on.

And, no, I’m not alone there, either, as Raw Story reports, per a 1993 Boston Globe article:

A classified US intelligence analysis has concluded that Kuwait may have “cooked the books” on an alleged plot to assassinate former President Bush while he was in Kuwait last month. [...] At least one administration official has expressed the fear that President Clinton, under heavy criticism for his indecision over issues like Bosnia, may be tempted to hit at Iraq to prove his willingness to undertake resolute action. The report notes that some of the evidence definitely points to Iraqi involvement. The explosive devices captured by the Kuwaitis, for example, match those used by Iraqi intelligence in other terrorist operations. But the report says it was unable to corroborate the Kuwaiti assertion that the plot was aimed at Bush.

It would have been easy for Kuwait to use captured Iraqi ordinance from the Gulf War to set this whole thing up.

But, why?

Perhaps they were worried Clinton would pull out of the Gulf.

And, there’s nothing to say they were acting alone. Certainly, other Arab sheikhdoms and monarchies, still worried about Hussein two years after the Gulf War, could have been in on the deal.

On the other hand, perhaps the al-Sabahs expected more than just a pinprick missile strike by Clinton. Maybe they thought they could get another invasion of Iraq.

Remember as well that this is the same al-Sabahs who hired a Big Five American PR company to produced false advertising propaganda about newborn babies being snatched by Iraqi troops from Kuwait hospital incubators, who had representatives of this same PR firm lie before Congress (without any criminal sanctions ever being sought) and who otherwise brooked no ethical scruples to make sure we got into the Gulf War in the first place.

This is the same al-Sabahs who provoked Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in the first place by slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields.