COLUMN LEFT : Washington’s Crocodile Outrage : Iraq, with U.S. help, humbled Iran and then did just what everyone feared Iran would do.

The tremendous bellows of outrage by George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and other leaders against Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait should not be allowed to obscure the less virtuous realities of the situation. It was in fact an initiative by the United States that emboldened President Saddam Hussein to march his troops south.

In the past, Iraq has restrained from such adventures out of fear of intervention by Iran. But Iran is now sidelined, finally forced to sue for peace in its eight-year war with Iraq, in part because the United States provided naval escorts for tankers in the Persian Gulf, which had the effect of aiding Iraq.

U.S. strategists spent the end of the 1970s and most of the ‘80s seeing Iran as the rogue power in the area. Along with Britain, the United States tilted to Iraq as the necessary counterweight to Iran’s fervid rhetoric against Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. As so often in the past, these strategists were fighting every war except the one that finally took place. Now Iraq has done exactly what was feared of Iran.

If President Bush’s outrage sounds hypocritical to some, including the vast majority of Latin American leaders who saw his invasion of Panama as equally illegal and outrageous, it might also seem a little ungrateful. A sharp rise in world oil prices will no doubt come as a boon to the President’s cronies in the Oil Patch and may even be reflected in a revival in the housing market in the oil states.

For Prime Minister Thatcher, who spent most of last week reading the Confederation of British Industries’ predictions of impending recession, the oil-price rise comes as manna from heaven. Britain’s revenues from its North Sea oil will now soar and help stave off economic downturn before the next election.

The threat of sanctions--primarily in the form of an embargo on oil--could possibly have teeth, but Iraq withstood equally savage pressures in its war against Iran. Iraq is broke already, having about $15 billion in debts (a realistic Western estimate) after its long war, and could suggest to its creditors that they talk to Washington and other sponsors of any punitive economic sanctions. The reason Iraq invaded was that Kuwait’s overproduction of oil, in breach of OPEC guidelines, was--according to President Saddam Hussein--costing his country $1 billion for every dollar that Kuwait’s overproduction knocked off the price of oil.

Against Iraq’s large and battle-hardened army and considerable air power, it seems unlikely that anyone will mount military sanctions, even though a “Bush Doctrine” will no doubt now come yapping along the tracks of the old Carter Doctrine, which used strong language about American resolve to respond if it felt its interests in the Middle East to be threatened.

Now that they are being threatened, the most imposing artillery barrages will probably be unleashed on Capitol Hill, in rhetoric by Pentagon officials before the relevant committees. We may confidently await a tsunami of verbiage about the need for long-range transports, stand-off anti-tank weapons, air-to-air missiles and bombers allegedly able to penetrate “sophisticated” defenses--i.e. the Stealth bomber.

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, who had a pretty good run for his money. In comfortable exile, he will no doubt rue his errors: thinking that Hussein was bluffing; failing to see, at the climactic meeting of the OPEC countries in Geneva in July, that Iran and Saudi Arabia were siding with Iraq against Kuwait.

The greatest failure, as usual, was that of the intelligence services and of the journalists who consort with them. The United States was hailing the therapeutic properties of dialogue only hours before Iraqi tanks rolled across Kuwait’s border. Britain was caught equally off-balance. Its current ambassador to Baghdad, Harold (Hooky) Walker, was on holiday in Woking. The head of Israeli military intelligence was celebrating at his own wedding. It would be too cynical to conjecture that the United States actually gave Hussein a tacit go-ahead, as it did before he started his war against Iran. Ronald Reagan and George Bush and the talk-tough crowd made a staggering miscalculation. They beefed up Iraq to stop Khomeini’s fanatic hordes, and now have the mortification of seeing a brilliant coup by the very watchdog they had favored. The unexpected was bound to befall those who complacently thought that because the Soviet Union has bowed out of the Cold War, the world can hold no ugly surprises.