PERSPECTIVE ON U.S.-IRAQI RELATIONS : On the Eve of Infamy, We Blinked : The day before the invasion, our diplomats were assuring Hussein of the President’s continued support.

The Bush Administration’s policy toward Iraq caught up with reality the day Iraq invaded Kuwait.

While President Bush has done a solid and effective job of leading the international community and marshaling American military might to demonstrate to Saddam Hussein that his aggression will fail, it is ironic that the Administration was sending Hussein business-as-usual signals as recently as the day before the invasion.

Indeed, two days before, the Administration sent its top Middle East representative, Assistant Secretary of State John H. Kelly, to testify before the House subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East against terminating our agricultural credit program toward Iraq and also against stopping our continued importation of 600,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day.

The next day--the day before the invasion--the State Department again sent its representative to Capitol Hill to inform the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it opposed legislation to impose sanctions against Iraq, a policy the committee had been urging the Administration to accept for close to two years.

Kelly also opposed legislation to condemn Iraqi human-rights violations. Rather than being the act of a foreign-policy loner, Kelly’s repeated efforts to extend an olive branch to Saddam Hussein was part of a coordinated Administration policy. Our ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Hussein two days before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Rather than respond to the outrageous tongue-lashing she received from Hussein, she assured him that the Administration was still opposing congressional efforts to sanction Iraq.

A transcript of the Glaspie-Hussein conversation reveals that our ambassador stated: “I have direct instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq. . . . President Bush . . . is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq.”

One of the biggest myths that the Iraq apologist crowd has disseminated is that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was so unexpected as to be practically unimaginable--a bolt from the blue that no one could have anticipated, and that no one did anticipate.

In fact, members of Congress and other observers warned for the better part of two years that there were no bounds to Hussein’s thirst for power or his ruthlessness in furthering his goals.

Last autumn, because of Iraq’s record of brutality, the massacre of the Kurds in particular, Congress enacted legislation to deny export-import credits to Iraq. In December, the President exercised his authority to waive this restriction.

The Administration also fervently opposed all other sanctions legislation against Iraq. As early as Jaunary, 1989, Congress worked to impose stiff sanctions against any country that used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law or against its own citizens--a direct reply to the massacre of the Kurds. The Bush Administration fought a successful battle to weaken every provision that would have given this legislation teeth, thereby sending unmistakeable signals to Hussein that the United States wasn’t serious about chastising him or limiting his burgeoning chemical arsenal. Even more malicious than this diplomatic coziness was the excessive concern shown for a booming Iraqi-American business relationship.

In 1982, the Reagan Administration removed Iraq from the list of nations that support international terrorism, despite the absence of a single shred of evidence indicating that Iraq had decided to join the civilized family of nations. By taking Iraq off the “terrorist list,” a variety of trade sanctions and export restrictions on Iraq were automatically lifted.

To repay Washington for this diplomatic largess, Baghdad increased its support for the Palestine Liberation Organization and set up terrorist training centers in Iraq, beginning in 1983. After the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro, when American Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and thrown overboard, Hussein provided a safe haven for Abul Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking. Abbas, free to travel on an Iraqi passport, resurfaced to plan the terrorist raid on an Israeli beach last May. Despite such stark and inescapable evidence, first President Reagan and then President Bush consistently refused to label Iraq as supporting terrorism.

Given these exhortations, pleas and warnings, the subsequent cries of “Who could have guessed?” from the Iraq apologists are self-serving and disingenuous. In fact, there were many correct guesses, and the Administration bears significant responsibility for ignoring them.