Finger-Pointing at the Wrong Culprit : What did Glaspie really say to Saddam?

Two days of congressional testimony by the American ambassador to Baghdad has done disappointingly little to clarify the thinking behind U.S. policy toward Iraq in the weeks and months preceding its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait. If anything, April Glaspie’s version of her important July 25 meeting with Saddam Hussein, and the State Department’s comments or lack thereof, have left the question more confused than ever.

At issue first of all is the accuracy of a transcript of the meeting that Iraq released last September. It shows an Iraqi leader who was tough and menacing in his remarks, and an American ambassador who seemed docile and even flattering in her responses. Glaspie says the transcript was doctored and doesn’t reflect a crucial 20% of what was said. Her own report to the State Department, she says, shows that she implicitly warned Saddam that the United States would respond forcefully if he committed aggression.

The problem is (1) there is no verbatim American transcript of the meeting to compare against the Iraqi version; (2) the department refuses to make public Glaspie’s summarizing cable on the talks, on the ground that to do so would violate diplomatic confidentiality--surely a moot point now, and (3) that the department’s views on the accuracy of the Iraqi transcript have changed markedly between September and this week.

In September, and subsequently, no effort was made to deny the substance of what Iraq put out. At one point an anonymous State Department official even suggested the transcript was “essentially correct.” This week, though, department spokesman Richard Boucher said the transcript had been “heavily edited to the point of inaccuracy.” If that was the case, why didn’t the department say so months ago? Its answer, which strains credulity, is that to have done so would have interfered with efforts to form and maintain the anti-Iraq coalition. How? Why? There is no explanation.

Boucher describes the transcript controversy as a sideshow. In a way he’s right, for the much larger issue to be addressed involves the delusionary policy that the Bush Administration--and the Reagan Administration before it--pursued toward Iraq, right up to last Aug. 2.

Top U.S. officials wanted to believe that Iraq had given up supporting terrorism, that Saddam Hussein was a reasonable leader, that the threats he was hurling at Kuwait and Israel were only rhetoric, that the evidence of his intense efforts to build, buy or steal nuclear and chemical weapons components was not alarming. Congress saw the appalling flaws in this policy. That’s why, against vigorous Administration opposition, it made efforts last summer to impose sanctions on Baghdad. What explains those Administration policy flaws? The key person to ask is Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Glaspie, whose judgment and reputation were left undefended by the department for six long months, didn’t create policy; ambassadors almost never do. It’s the policy-makers who should now be called to explain.