On the Nature of Things | Forum

Doc wrote:

Azrael wrote:

Azrael wrote:Bush left him in power because he was no longer strong enough to threaten Saudi Arabia; but just strong enough to keep Iran out of Basra.

An additional motive to leave Saddam in power could have been to provide an excuse to station large numbers of troops in the Persian Gulf region -- "to contain Saddam".

That is a good point. In Fact the Kuwaitis didn't even want Egyptian troops to protect them. Just US troops.

That doesn't surprise me, given how many members of the Muslim Brotherhood and even more extreme groups are in the Egyptian military.

If the President of Egypt couldn't even trust his own security forces (I'm referring to Sadat being assassinated) I wouldn't expect the Kuwaitis to trust them.

Azrael wrote:

Azrael wrote:Bush left him in power because he was no longer strong enough to threaten Saudi Arabia; but just strong enough to keep Iran out of Basra.

An additional motive to leave Saddam in power could have been to provide an excuse to station large numbers of troops in the Persian Gulf region -- "to contain Saddam".

This is certainly Saudi Arabia's cheif motivation. US troops to train their own internal security apparatus, with the excuse of Saddam to explain why they were there to the Saudi Wahhabi clerics. Today there are tens of thousands of US-trained Saudi troops with US-made weapons ready to gun down any anti-regime protesters in "the Kingdom."

Of course this was also one of Bin Laden's big gripes and motivations for 9/11, but who could see all of that coming in 1991.

The Saudi brothers are sneaky bastards.