THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

1991

• The CIA, in its classified report on "openness," writes the following: "PAO [the CIA's Public Affairs Office] now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.

  US intelligence

  This has helped us turn some 'intelligence failure' stories into 'intelligence success' stories, and it has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many instances, we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods." (CIA On Campus)
• During the year, Bush's brother Johnathan,

  Bush family

  who first sponsored his nephew George W. Bush in the oil business, is fined $30,000 in Massachusetts along with a smaller fine in Connecticut for violating laws regulating the sale of securities. He is barred for trading securities in Massachusetts for one year. (Village Voice)
• Deputy Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao is named by George Bush to be the director of the Peace Corps, a position she will hold for two years.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  She will oversee the transformation of the Corps from an organization staffed with young idealists determined to help the world's poorest citizens into an organization bent on creating and developing business markets around the globe. Author Laura Flanders writes of the Corps' efforts in Russia, "Russians needed experts in heart disease, alcoholism, cancer, radiation poisoning, and wife abuse. What they got, courtesy of the Peace Corps, was a state-funded capitalist vanguard." (Laura Flanders)
• 89-year old Republican senator Strom Thurmond, known disparagingly as "The Sperminator" because of his well-known sexual proclivities,

  Congressional Republicans

  divorces his wife of 22 years, Nancy, because she is "too old to be his lover." Nancy Thurmond is 44 years younger than her ex-husband. Nancy, who had devoted her entire adult life to supporting her husband, becomes despondent and turns to heavy drinking. Several years later, Thurmond, a famous segregationist who has thundered against "immoral Democrats" and licentious behavior while privately having sex with, and molesting, untold numbers of women, is proven to have fathered a child upon a young black woman, Essie Mae Washington, in 1925; Thurmond quietly supported Washington and her child all his life without letting the news of his parentage become public, though rumors of the incident have swirled around Washington and Thurmond's home state of South Carolina for half a century. (Hilton and Testa)

January 1991

• January 14: Factionalism between rival Palestinian factions

  Middle East unrest

  comes to a head when a group headed by Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal assassinates two key leaders of the PLO. (Dawoud el-Alami)

 

 

• January 15:

  Gulf War

  The UN Security Council sets this date as the deadline for Iraq's complete withdrawal from Kuwait. (MidEast Web, FactMonster)

 

US invades Iraq: "Operation Desert Storm"

• January 16: With Congress's approval, Bush authorizes the most devastating air assault in history as the first maneuver of "Operation Desert Storm."

  Gulf War

  The Soviets work with Iraq to come up with a plan for withdrawal that does not comply with all UN resolutions; Bush rejects the plan and gives Iraq until February 23 to withdraw from Kuwait. The highly touted "pinpoint accuracy" aerial bombing is later proven to be misnamed, as only 8% of the missiles fired were "smart" weapons capable of zeroing in on specific targets; as in most wars, many of the missiles and bombs released did not hit their intended targets, and thousands of Iraqi civilians die in the initial strikes. (Notably, the lead pilot of the first wave of attack aircraft to strike Baghdad is Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar bin Sultan.) It is also worth noting that, while Bush notified most major countries of the impending air strike 24 hours before, he does not inform the USSR's Mikhail Gorbachev until one hour before, because the CIA knows there is a leak in Gorbachev's inner circle; sure enough, minutes after Bush's call to Moscow, US intelligence intercepts a warning call from Moscow to Baghdad.
• Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who has no military experience or training whatsoever, is angered by the initial war planning for Desert Storm. "He looked at the war plan and was appalled by its lack of creativity and tore it to pieces," recalls a then-staffer for Democratic senator Sam Nunn. Though Cheney lacks the training of the Pentagon's generals, he is correct in his assessment: the plans, drawn up mostly by General Norman Schwarzkopf, call for American troops to essentially go head-to-head with Iraqi Army emplacements, guaranteeing staggeringly large casualties. Cheney spends days with Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell, who does have military experience and strategical training, poring over war plans, pushing Powell, and leaning on the Pentagon generals doing the planning. "He wasn't a micromanager like [Kennedy's defense secretary Robert] McNamara," one of the generals involved in the planning recalls. "And he wasn't arrogant like [future defense secretary Donald] Rumsfeld. He wanted this one done right." Cheney joins Powell in arguing for the "enhanced option," adding 100,000 US troops to the American contingent already deployed in Saudi Arabia, bringing the number of US forces to battle Hussein to a half million. Cheney believes that Desert Storm will end, once and for all, America's Vietnam War syndrome. "The military is finished in this society if we screw this up," he tells Bandar.
• Powell and Cheney clash over one major item. Cheney wants to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iraq if need be. Powell disagrees, and says that not only would such a use of nuclear weapons be horrendously wrongheaded, he wants to retire the military's tactical nuclear weapons force in its entirety. Cheney, supported by his neoconservative aides David Addington and Paul Wolfowitz, sharply disagrees with Powell, who says that tactical nukes are inaccurate, expensive to maintain, and largely irrelevant in modern conventional warfare. Powell's point will eventually prevail; in September 2002, George W. Bush will implement Powell's recommendations.
• The initial assault -- 38 straight days of intense bombings of Iraqi positions in Kuwait and strategic sites in Baghdad and throughout Iraq -- is devastating. In the first 48 hours of combat, 2,107 combat missions drop over 5,000 tons of bombs on Baghdad alone, nearly twice the amount Allied forces dropped on Dresden in 1945. The bombing plan is similar to that laid out four months before for the press by then-Air Force chief of staff Michael Dugan, who was summarily fired by Cheney after leaking the bombing plans to the Washington Post. "The cutting edge would be downtown Baghdad," Dugan said. Dugan also told the Post that, according to his sources in Israeli intelligence, Saddam Hussein would be devastated by an attack on his family and his mistress. The Post ran the story, "US to Rely on Air Power if War Erupts," on September 16, 1990; two days later, it reported that Dugan's loose-lipped revelations cost him his job, reporting that "Dugan discussed 'things we never talk about,' Cheney says." Though no member of the Joint Chiefs had been fired since 1948, Dugan had talked to the press, revealed battle plans, and revealed the involvement of Israeli intelligence in a war Cheney had just sold to a reluctant King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Dugan had to go.
• Interestingly, Cheney and Powell forge a strong working relationship over Desert Storm; Powell's war plan, supported by Cheney, is highly successful, resulting in only four days of ground war and 137 official American fatalities (though hundreds of US troops will later come down with the inexplicable, and officially ignored, "Gulf War syndrome," possibly from toxins released in Hussein's burning of oil wells or perhaps even chemical weapons used by Iraqi forces). But the war also drives the two men apart. Cheney intends to use the war as a springboard for his own presidential run in 1996. Cheney plans on using his "war experience" as a campaign starter: according to Time magazine, he wants to tell the story of his never losing a night's sleep over making the difficult decisions, packing his own bags to fly to Saudi Arabia, taking his cowboy boots and his lucky beige zippered jacket, and connecting with the troops on the ground. He has an array of glowing photos taken for his campaign. Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein write in 2006, "Cheney was taking full advantage of the Gulf War success to write his campaign biography. But then, as now, he lacked Powell's charisma and telegenic qualities." A Pentagon general recalls witnessing what may have been the Cheney-Powell divorce, at the "Salute to the Men and Women of the Desert Storm Campaign" held at the Washington Hilton in April 1991. Democratic congressman Jack Murtha, a staunch advocate of the troops, insisted on bringing a coterie of enlisted men to the bash. "There were E-1s to E-4s with their girlfriends dressed to the nines running all over the hotel," the general recalls. "Everyone made speeches. The event broke up and those kids mobbed Powell. They couldn't get enough of him. Cheney was definitely not mobbed. The TV moved to Powell and left Cheney with a few people talking to him. Cheney looked over there and saw a rival he could not match."
• There will be talk of a Cheney-Powell ticket for 1996, but, as Powell's political star rises, the talk shifts to a Powell-Cheney ticket. Cheney isn't having any. When he leaves the Pentagon to return to private life in 1992, after Bush's defeat by Bill Clinton, he doesn't bother to stop by Powell's office to say goodbye. "There was no farewell," recalls Powell's aide, Larry Wilkerson. "Powell never knew he departed and all of a sudden he's still the chairman and Cheney's gone." (FactMonster, MidEast Web, FactMonster, A Timeline of Oil and Violence, Larry Kolb, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)

Media coverage of war completely controlled by Pentagon

• January 16-on: Media coverage of the Gulf War is completely controlled by the Pentagon.

  Media manipulation and marketing by GOP

  In 2003, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte says of the US television coverage of the invasion: "The television networks made that first Gulf War look like highlights for the eleven o'clock news or a baseball game. Every single swing is a home run -- WHAM! Missiles never missed. Coming back to the Gulf, I talked to a guy on an airplane about that. ...He was involved in the missile program. He said that the Patriots were not designed to shoot down missiles in the air, like bullets shooting at a boat. You wanted to knock the warhead or the engine off, so the warhead goes off on its own self. Now, he said, they're really pretty good." CBS news cameraman Mario DeCavalho has a tremendous amount of experience in the battlefields of the world, having covered conflicts in Israel, Central America, Colombia, Haiti, and others, and was one of the few embedded journalists involved in the 1991 Gulf War. He says, "I went to Saudi Arabia, and was one of the very few 'embedded guys' with the military, when the air war started -- January 1991...and they put us in a pool. It was absolute bullsh*t. All the censorship, man, was ridiculous! Terrible! We could do nothing but what they wanted us to do: 'Look how great we are!' ...That is wrong! I do not want that. The hell with that. Am I with the Soviet Army?" The Pentagon restricts coverage of US troops in Saudi Arabia, telling US journalists that they must apply to the Saudi government for approval to cover US troops in that country. New York Times executive editor Howard Raines says of the press after the war, "We lost. They managed us completely. If it were an athletic contest, the score would be 100 to 1."
• Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is at the heart of the media management of the war. He not only wants media access completely controlled, he wants Congress to stay out of the way, arguing that, even though the war with Iraq is a larger undertaking than the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, Bush does not need Congress's approval for the invasion. In fact, Cheney spends more time wooing foreign leaders like Saudi Arabia's King Fahd than he does working with members of Congress. But Cheney doesn't exclude Congress entirely; after both bodies narrowly approve a resolution that gives the president the authority to use "all means necessary" to throw Iraq out of Kuwait, as Cheney sees it, Congress's role is done. (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Lou Dubose and Jakes Bernstein)
• January 17: Israel is encouraged to stay out of the US-led coalition;

  Gulf War

  even though Iraq fires several badly aimed Scud missiles at Israeli targets, Israel agrees not to retaliate. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)

US destroys Iraqi water supply, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis

• January 22: The Defense Intelligence Agency releases a secret report entitled "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities."

  Gulf War

  This report outlines the likely consequences to the Iraqi population once the nation's water supply system had been damaged or destroyed. "It states that epidemics and disease outbreaks may occur because of pollutants and bacteria that exist in unpurified water. The document acknowledges the fact that without purified drinking water, the manufacturing of food and medicine will also be affected. The possibilities of Iraqis obtaining clean water, despite sanctions, along with a timetable describing the degradation of Iraq's water supply was also addressed." During the Gulf War, the Iraqi water supply system is a primary target of coalition air strikes and ground forces; this targeting will continue through 2003, essentially destroying Iraq's water supply system and refusing to allow it to be rebuilt. UN sanctions imposed after the war deny the importation of specialized equipment and chemicals, such as chlorine for purification of water; as a result, thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, die of disease and thirst. A number of DIA documents prove that the water situation in Iraq was carefully monitored through the years by the US, and that a counter-intelligence program was underway to blame Saddam Hussein for the lack of water in his country. (Gulflink, ZNet, Progressive/Project Censored)

February 1991

• February 13: Badly aimed US bombs destroy an air raid shelter in Baghdad,

  Gulf War

  killing more than 300 civilians. (BBC)

 

 

• February 15: Bush calls on the Iraqi civilians to "take matters into their own hands" and overthrow the Hussein regime.

  Gulf War

  The Iraqi Kurds heed the call and begin mounting an active resistance to the Iraqi government. (A Timeline of Oil and Violence)

 

Iraqi forces set oil fields ablaze

• February 24-28: Bush orders ground troops to begin assaulting Iraqi targets.

  Gulf War

  In four days of combat marked mainly by coalition advances and Iraqi retreats, the American-led coalition forces overwhelm the Iraqi resistance. As a final act of destruction to Kuwait's infrastructure, the Iraqis set fire to over 500 Kuwaiti oil wells, causing tremendous environmental damage. (BBC, FactMonster, FactMonster)

Entire invasion and "liberation" of Kuwait carefully stage-managed by GOP-hired public relations firms

• February 26: Coalition forces enter Kuwait City. People around the world watch as the soldiers are welcomed by cheering Kuwaitis waving hand-held American and other flags.

  Media manipulation and marketing by GOP

  Public relations consultant John Rendon will ask an Air Force Academy audience in February 1996, "Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American, and for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then." Rendon delivered US flags to Kuwaiti citizens and ensured that plenty of Kuwaitis were on hand to cheer for the cameras as troops entered the capital as part of his duties as public relations management for the Pentagon and the CIA in Iraq. Hussein orders a withdrawal of the remaining Iraqi forces from Kuwait. (MidEast Web, In These Times, A Timeline of Oil and Violence)
• February 27: Bush orders a unilateral ceasefire.

  Gulf War

  Even though the ceasefire is in effect, the US 24th Mechanized Infantry kills thousands of fleeing Iraqi soldiers between now and March 2. (MidEast Web, FactMonster, A Timeline of Oil and Violence)

 

• Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, who will say in 1992 that ousting Saddam Hussein would have been most difficult and costly in both lives and dollars, rails against US companies doing business in Iraq after the war's end.

  Dick Cheney

  Evidently Cheney's memory fails him; during his 1995-2000 tenure as CEO of Halliburton, the corporation owns part of two companies that will do over $73 million in business selling oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq, in direct contravention of US law. For the record, Cheney will say, "I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once US forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force." Cheney's words are quite prescient considering the events of March 2003 and beyond. (Washington Institute/Daily Kos, Amy and David Goodman)
• General Norman Schwarzkopf, one of the prime architects of the US military strategy, will write in his 1993 biography,

  Gulf War

  It Doesn't Take a Hero, "From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit -- we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on." (Norman Schwarzkopf, quoted by Maureen Farrell/Buzzflash)
• Colin Powell, whose own strategies prevented the US from taking horrendous losses in Iraq, will write in 1992,

  Gulf War

  "The Gulf War was a limited-objective war. If it had not been, we would be ruling Baghdad today -- an unpardonable expense in terms of money, lives lost and ruined regional relationships. ...Would it have been worth the inevitable follow-up: major occupation forces in Iraq for years to come and a very expensive and complex American proconsulship in Baghdad? Fortunately for America, reasonable people at the time thought not. They still do." (Colin Powell, quoted by Maureen Farrell/Buzzflash)

March 1991

• March 1: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announces

  Gulf War

  that Iraq is attempting to develop a nuclear weapon. (BAS/Electric Venom)

 

 

• March 3: Coalition and Iraqi leaders meet to discuss terms; Iraq agrees to a complete ceasefire, to withdraw from Kuwait immediately, and to abide by all UN resolutions.

  Gulf War

  Harsh economic sanctions are imposed on Iraq which will remain in force until after the second invasion in 2003. One of the most important sets of sanctions are the "Oil-for-Food" sanctions on Iraqi oil production, which limits Iraq's oil production to 2 million barrels per day. The program was putatively designed, according to a US report to Congress, to prevent Iraq from "acquiring equipment that could be used to reconstitute banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs." Interestingly, because of the nature of the oil market, the sanctions on Iraqi oil production actually increases Iraq's oil revenues. The sanctions are less about weapons of mass destruction and more about the profits of the world's oil sellers. (BBC, FactMonster, FactMonster, Greg Palast)
• Kevin Phillips observes that, in light of the 1991 Gulf War's inconclusive end, "the Gulf War wound up becoming, in part, a display case of the consequences of corruption and covert overindulgence.

  Gulf War

  Especially among the well-read, the war's inconclusive end catalyzed awareness that before the Gulf War the Bush administration had winked permissively as, in the summer of 1990, Saddam Hussein maneuvered to gobble up a portion of Kuwait. In this larger context, the war became testimony to Bush's prior ineptitude, not just his coalition-building achievements. Iraqgate, as the sum of Bush's 1984-90 overindulgences of Iraq (and their cover-up) came to be known, was able to catch hold only in 1991 and 1992, after the fighting. The election was manifestly influenced. Besides the weakness in the US economy in 1991-92, a second reason why Bush lost, despite having enjoyed 90% job approval ratings right after the war, was the accumulating tarnish on his ethics and even his military success. By early 1992, all three Middle East-connected scandals -- the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, and Iraqgate -- were commanding national notice." (Kevin Phillips)

After invasion, Hussein crushes Kurdish rebellion encouraged by US

• March - April: The Bush administration encourages Kurds and Shi'ite rebels in Iraq to rebel against Saddam Hussein.

  Gulf War

  A huge (60- to 100,000 man) militia takes up arms against the Hussein regime. Unfortunately for the rebels, the Bush administration refuses to support them as promised. The pledged American military assistance never materializes, and the rebels are crushed by Hussein's forces, primarily by helicopters okayed for use by the US ceasefire agreement and allowed to operate through coalition lines.
• In his 2007 book Web of Deceit, author Barry Lando adds the damning details. In February 1991 (see above item), Bush called for the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Hussein. US Air Force plans dropped millions of leaflets all over Iraq; the US broadcast the message over Iraqi airwaves. And indeed, the Shi'ites, long repressed under Hussein's brutal Sunni-Ba'athist regime, were ready to heed the call. In March, tens of thousands of Shi'ites rise up in arms against Hussein. They are quickly joined by their disaffected fellow Iraqis, the Kurds. Hussein's days are numbered, writes Lando.
• Or they would have been, had Bush kept his word. Bush doesn't want what Lando calls a "messy popular uprising." Instead, he wants "a neat military coup -- another strongman more amenable to Western interests. The White House feared that turmoil would give the Iranians increased influence, upset the Turks, wreak havoc throughout the region." So not only does Bush not turn its back on the rebelling Iraqis, it actually aids Hussein in smashing the revolt.
• When Hussein begins counter-attacking against the rebels, US troops throughout Iraq are ordered not to help the rebels in any way, even though everyone from generals to privates know that those orders are condemning the intifada rebels to death. Instead, the rebellion, and the counter-attacks, are monitored by US commanders from high-flying observation aircraft.
• Rocky Gonzalez is a Special Forces warrant officer serving in southern Iraq, one of the few Americans who speak passable Arabic. Years later, the now-retired Gonzalez recalls his horror at the havoc and slaughter being spread throughout Iraq by Hussein's retaliation. "The rebels wanted aid, they wanted medical treatment, and some of the individuals wanted us to give them weapons and ammunition so they could go and fight. One of the refugees was waving a leaflet that had been dropped by US planes over Iraq. Those leaflets told them to rise up against the regime and free themselves. They weren't asking us to fight. They felt they could do that themselves. Basically they were just saying 'we rose up like you asked us, now give us some weapons and arms to fight.'" But though the Americans have huge stockpiles of weapons and ammo captured from the Iraqis, they are ordered to destroy them rather than give them to the rebels. "It was gut-wrenching to me," Gonzalez recalls. "Here we were sitting on the Euphrates River and we were ordered to stop. As a human being, I wanted to help, but as a solider I had my orders." A Shi'ite survivor of the uprising recalls seeing the weapons and ammunition destroyed near the town of Nasiriyah. "They blew up an enormous stock of arms," he recalls bitterly. "If we had been able to get hold of them, the course of history would have been changed in favor of the uprising, because Saddam had nothing left at that moment."
• The Shi'ite survivor is more correct than he knows. Hussein's intelligence chief during the revolt, General Wafiq al-Samarrai, later recalls that the government forces have almost no ammunition left when they finally squelched the revolt. "By the last week of the intifada," he recalls over a decade later, "the army was down to two hundred and seventy thousand Kalashnikov bullets." That would have lasted for just two more days of fighting.
• General Norman Schwarzkopf will later write in his autobiography, without giving details, that the American-led coalition aided Hussein to crush the uprising. Lando calls Schwarzkopf's justification for this "curious," noting that in an interview Schwarzkopf later says the Iraqi people are not innocent in the whole affair because "they supported the invasion of Kuwait and accepted Saddam Hussein."
• Iraqi survivors of the intifada recall that US forces actually prevent them from marching on Baghdad. "American helicopters landed on the road to block our way and stopped us from continuing," one says. "One of the American soldiers threatened to kill us if we didn't turn back." Another Shi'ite leader, Dr. Hamid al-Bayatti, later claims that the US even provided the Iraqi Republican Guards with fuel. The Americans, he charges, disarmed some resistance units and allowed Republican Guard tanks to go through their checkpoints to crush the uprising. American Middle East expert William Quandt concurs: "We let one Iraqi division go through our lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse."
• To add more injury to the debacle, US officials refuse to even meet with Shi'ites to hear their case. Peter Galbraith later writes, "These were desperate people, desperate for US help. But the US refused to talk to any of the Shi'ite leaders: the US Embassy, Schwarzkopf, nobody would see them, nor even give them an explanation." Even after the US learns that Hussein is using chemical weapons against the rebels, the stonewalling continues. "You could see there were helicopters crisscrossing the skies, going back and forth," Gonzalez recalls. "Within a few hours people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns. They were saying, 'We are fighting the Iraqi military and the Ba'ath Party and they sprayed us with chemicals.' We were guessing mustard gas. They had blisters and burns on their face and on their hands, on places where the skin was exposed. As the hours passed, more and more people were coming. And I asked them, 'Why don't you go to the hospital in Kerbala,' and the response was that all the doctors and nurses had been executed by the Iraqi soldiers, 'so we come to you for aid.'" None is forthcoming.
• Lando writes, "One of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm had been that Saddam would unleash his WMD. US officials repeatedly warned Iraq that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered -- or so the Bush administration led the world to believe. [Gonzalez's] suspicion that Saddam did resort to them in 1991 was later confirmed by the report of the US Government's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD after the US-led invasion in 2003 and concluded that Saddam no longer had any WMD. Almost universally ignored by the media, however, was the finding that Saddam had resorted to his WMD during the 1991 uprising. The 'regime was shaking and wanted something "very quick and effective" to put down the revolt.' They considered then rejected using mustard gas, as it would be too perceptible with US troops close by. Instead, on March 7th, 1991 the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. 'Dozens of sorties were flown against Shi'ite rebels in Kerbala and the surrounding areas,' the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.
• "Because of previous US warnings against resorting to chemical weapons, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk, but the Coalition never reacted. The lingering question is why. It's impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. There were repeated charges from Shi'ite survivors that the Iraqi dictator had used chemical weapons. Rocky Gonzalez said he heard from refugees that nerve gas was being used. He had also observed French-made Iraqi helicopters -- one of which was outfitted as a crop sprayer -- making repeated bomb runs over Najaf. Gonzalez maintained that, contrary to what the ISG report said, many of the refugees who fled to US lines were indeed victims of mustard gas. 'Their tongues were swollen,' he said, 'and they had severe burns on the mucous tissue on the inside of their mouths and nasal passages. Our chemical officer also said it looked like mustard gas.' Gonzalez suggested that local Iraqi officials, desperate to put down the uprising, may have used mustard gas without permission from on high. 'A lot of that was kept quiet,' he said, 'because we didn't want to panic the troops. We stepped up our training with gas masks, because we were naturally concerned.' Gonzalez's unit also passed their information on to their superiors. 'There was no way that officers higher didn't know what was happening,' Gonzalez said. 'Whether those reports went above our division, I have no idea.' ...At the time, few subjects were more sensitive than Saddam's potential use of WMD. It's difficult to believe that reports from Gonzalez's unit weren't flashed immediately up the chain of command in the Gulf and Washington." Other reliable witnesses also saw Hussein's troops unleashing chemical weapons -- in fact, US intelligence has videotapes of such bombings.
• Secretary of State James Baker warns Hussein on March 7 not to resort to using chemical weapons in putting down the rebellion. However, when the US learns that Hussein defied that order, nothing is done in response. Why? Lando writes, "One plausible explanation -- denouncing Saddam for using chemical weapons would have greatly increased pressure on the US president to come to the aid of the Shi'ites. Instead, the American decision to turn their backs on the Intifada gave a green light to Saddam Hussein's ruthless counterattack." And it was stunning in its brutality. "Women were being raped. People were being shot in the streets and just left to rot there," one witness, Zainab al-Suwaij, recalls. "The citizens were forbidden to bury the bodies. Many of them were eaten by the dogs. The government ordered people out of Kerbala to take the road to Najaf. They were slaughtered and executed along the roadway. Many of those killed were teenagers." Hussein himself orders Iraqi TV to record and broadcast scenes of the repression: Lando describes them as "appalling scenes of captured Shi'ites, some with ropes around their necks, being kicked and beaten and insulted, threatened with pistols and machine guns, a few pleading for mercy. Most of them, eyes downcast, are eventually dragged away to execution."
Instead of taking any accountability of any kind, the Bush administration merely disengages itself from any responsibility for the horror playing itself out in Iraq. The American news media writes and broadcasts few news reports of the carnage, and broadcasts or prints no images of the slaughter. Lando writes, "Anonymous government figures, wise in the ways of Realpolitik, were making statements such as, 'It is far easier to deal with a tame Saddam Hussein than with an unknown quantity.'" The media obligingly goes along.
• Lando writes in 2007, "Because of Saddam's savage repression of the uprising, the ensuing UN sanctions, and the carnage unleashed by the 2003 invasion, at least one million Iraqis have probably lost their lives since 1991. Imagine if, instead of blocking the Intifada, George H.W. Bush had given a green light -- without even sending American troops to Baghdad -- just sent the needed signals: met with rebel leaders, ordered Saddam to stop flying his helicopter gunships. Granted there would have been a period of tumult. The Kurds might have achieved an autonomous or semi autonomous state, which is probably what they will wind up with. The Iranians would have certainly increased their influence through their Shi'ite allies, but probably no more than they have today. Indeed, some in the Bush I administration were recommending that he do just that: support the revolt he had called for. They were overruled." (MidEast Web, BBC, A Timeline of Oil and Violence, Barry Lando/AlterNet)

April 1991

• April: As an outgrowth of the Iraqi war, the US keeps 15-20,000 troops on permanent station in Saudi Arabia, though President Bush claims that all American troops have been brought home.

  Gulf War

  Their presence is not admitted to publicly until 1995, and no official explanation for their presence has ever been given. The best speculative explanation is that American troops were there to prevent a coup. Osama bin Laden and other Muslims are outraged at what they see as American occupation of Islamic holy lands; this occupation is later cited by al-Qaeda as one of the prime motives behind their attacks on the United States. (ZNet)

SEC investigates Harken Oil; investigation derailed by friends of Bush family

• April: The Securities and Exchange Commission opens an investigation into Harken Oil's stock dealings.

  George W. Bush

  Chairman Richard Breeden, who is appointed by President Bush and served as an economic policy adviser for his administration, is a partner in the law firm Baker & Botts, a large Texas oil law firm headed by Bush family friends and administration official James Baker. Inside the SEC, James Doty, general counsel and the official in charge of any litigation that might come out of the Harken investigation, is another alumnus of Baker & Botts. And as a private attorney, before joining the government, Doty represented the younger Bush in matters related to his ownership of the Rangers. Not surprisingly, the SEC's investigation ends two years later without producing any charges or negative findings against Harken. Since the end of the investigation, Breeden, Doty, and other lawyers at Baker & Botts have given Harken Oil CEO George W. Bush $182,050 for his various political campaigns, making the firm one of his biggest supporters. (Village Voice)
• April 3: The United Nations Security Council passes Resolution 687,

  Gulf War

  which instructs Iraq to provide full information on its weaponry and to disarm by destruction of all WMDs, ballistic missiles with range exceeding 150km and accompanying production facilities. Iraq agrees and provides some information but denies having biological weapons. (UN/Electric Venom)
• April 6: The official cease-fire between Iraq

  Gulf War

  and coalition forces is signed. (MidEast Web, FactMonster)

 

 

• April 8: At a meeting of the European Union,

  Gulf War

  a plan to establish a UN safe-haven in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds is adopted. Two days later, the US orders Iraq to end all military activity in this area. (BBC)

US military presence in Saudi Arabia infuriates Islamic radicals and leads to "jihad" against US

• April 29: Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney tells a symposium audience at the Washington Institute, "I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad [to overthrow Saddam Hussein] is also fallacious.

  Gulf War

  I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein, we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'a government or a Kurdish government or a Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once US forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a president to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit US military force. And it's my view that the president got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq." Prophetic words, and disturbing in light of Cheney's orchestration of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq by US forces. (Al Franken)

May 1991

• May: Bush signs a covert "lethal finding" that authorizes the CIA to spend a hundred million dollars to "create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power."

  Gulf War

  Robert Baer, a former CIA officer specializing in Iraq, later says the policy was all show, "like an ape beating its chest. No one had any expectation of marching into Baghdad and killing Saddam. It was an impossibility." Nonetheless, the CIA had received an influx of cash, and it decides to create an external opposition movement to Saddam. Partly because of domestic operations cutback from scandals about CIA operations in the 1970s, the agency outsources its project to the Rendon Group. Francis Brooke, a long-time colleague of Ahmad Chalabi, says that Rendon signed a secret contract with the CIA that guaranteed that it would receive a 10% "management fee" on top of whatever money it spent. The arrangement was an incentive to spend millions. "We tried to burn through forty million dollars a year," Brooke now says. "It was a very nice job." Brooke recalls that it is not hard to mobilize public opinion against a confirmed tyrant and despot like Saddam Hussein: "It was a campaign environment, with a lot of young people, and no set hierarchy. It was great. We had a real competitive advantage. We knew something about the twenty-four-hour media cycle, and how to manage a media campaign. CNN was new at that point. No one else knew how to do these things, but Rendon was great at issue campaigns."
• The group begins offering information to British journalists, and many articles subsequently appear in the London press. Though it is a violation of laws against domestic propaganda for Rendon to plant stories in the international media that would be picked up and reported in the US, and sometimes project managers have reprimanded the group for such illegal actions, that planting of stories for domestic propaganda purposes is central to Rendon's goals. "It was amazing how well it worked," says Brooke. "It was like magic." In addition to generating anti-Saddam news stories and creating a travelling "atrocity exhibit," which documented the human-rights abuses of Saddam's regime, the Rendon Group is charged with the delicate task of helping to create a viable and unified opposition movement against Saddam. "That is when I first met Dr. Chalabi," Brooke says. Chalabi, an international banker and financier, is already the CIA's favorite Iraqi opposition leader, described by former CIA official Frank Anderson as having "rare administrative competence." For all of his skill at backroom politicking, Chalabi is disliked by other Iraqi exiles. In June, 1992, the Iraqi National Congress will hold one of its first organizational meetings, in Vienna; Chalabi will not win enough backing to qualify for a seat on the fifteen-member board. By the time attendees return from the meeting, however, Chalabi's name has somehow been added to the list of members. Chalabi runs roughshod over the group's attempts at democratic governance, and, with his CIA backing, soon has the entire group under his domination. Also, the CIA's alliance with Chalabi helps him with his legal problems: he had recently been convicted, in absentia, by a military court in Jordan for his part in a spectacular bank fraud that imperilled the country's fragile economy. With the help of the US government, Chalabi is able to recast himself from an accused swindler to a charismatic political leader and a champion of liberal democratic values. (New Yorker)
• May 8: A low-level employee of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, Paula Jones, working a state-sponsored "quality management" conference at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel, says, in a press conference on February 11, 1994, that she is approached by one of Governor Bill Clinton's bodyguards, state trooper Danny Ferguson.

  Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"

  Ferguson tells Jones that she makes "the governor's knees knock," according to her story, and tells her that Clinton would like to meet with her in his suite. Jones says she views the invitation as an opportunity to advance her career in state government. Minutes later, after Ferguson escorts her to the suite and leaves her alone with Clinton, she says the governor compliments her on her body and her hair, then commits three "unwanted sexual advances" upon her, each more aggressive than the last. Jones claims that Clinton asks her for "a type of sex," which she refuses to reveal but that most assume to be oral sex. Jones says that she is so upset and shaken by the encounter that she leaves the AIDC conference and goes home. According to affidavits, she tells two friends of the unwanted advances. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)

June 1991

• June 6: UNSCOM, the UN's weapons inspection body, and the International Atomic Energy Association are given authority for inspections inside Iraq.

  Gulf War

  Weeks later, UNSCOM and IAEA officials attempt to intercept military vehicles containing materials possibly to be used as part of Iraq's nuclear program; though Iraqi soldiers discourage the interception by firing warning shots, the materials are later confiscated and destroyed. (UN/Electric Venom)

July 1991

• July: Attorney General William Barr refuses to appoint a special investigator to the BCCI/BNL scandal,

  BCCI scandal

  even after both he and his predecessor Frederick Lacey admitted that the investigation had been completely railroaded by the administration. (US/Iraq Relations Timeline)

 

• July: In the throes of a recession, activists for the rights of the unemployed lobby Congress fiercely for a bill to save them from financial disaster.

  Bush's economic policies

  They are successful in getting such a bill through Congress, but Bush backstabs the bill -- he signs it just before leaving for a vacation in Kennebunkport, then refuses to sign the provision that actually provides the emergency funding for the bill. Molly Ivins calls it a classic example of the "Texas Sidestep." (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
• July 1: The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved. (NATO and UN History)
• July 5: The Bank of England shuts down BCCI.

  BCCI scandal

  BCCI, largely owned by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, was involved in sponsoring terrorist activities, arms trafficking, money laundering for organized crime and drug trafficking, and other illegalities. Osama bin Laden, like many other Islamic radicals, had an account there. Although US intelligence knew of BCCI's illegal activities for years, the Americans did nothing to rein it in or discourage its nationals from becoming involved with it. (Why not? Partially because during the Soviet-Afghan war, the CIA used BCCI to funnel money to the Afghan rebels.) Under the auspices of the Pakistani ISI, which had deep connections with the bank before it was shut down, Pakistan becomes the new focus of the region's drug trafficking and arms trafficking profiteering. Years later, French intelligence reports that bin Laden had succeeded in rebuilding the BCCI money-laundering network. A pattern of drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorist support develops between Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISI, and the United Arab Emirates; CIA involvement is suspected but proves very difficult to verify. When BCCI folds, $11 billion in assets disappear; lawsuits filed by angry lossees are relentlessy fought by successive British governments as well as the Bush administration. One reason for the interference is the reluctance for the ties between BCCI, the Bush family, the Hussein regime in Iraq, and the Carlyle Group, among others, to be investigated. (Bush cabinet members Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had previously served as consultants for BCCI affiliate BNL before they joined the administration, as part of their duties with their then-employer, Kissinger Associates.) (CCR, Boston Herald)
• July 30: The first of many reports are issued by teams of UN weapons inspectors that state

  Gulf War

  Iraq is concealing weapons proscribed by UN resolutions. The US warns that Iraq will use its funds to build nuclear weapons. (FactMonster, US/Iraq Relations Timeline)

August 1991

• August: After a frustrating investigation by the SEC of Harken Oil and George W. Bush, in which Bush refuses to submit any but the least informative documents, the SEC closes the investigation.

  George W. Bush

  It is unable to find Bush guilty of any crimes, but withholds any finding of absolution. The day after the investigation officially ends, Bush submits documents detailing the warnings Harken's lawyers had given Bush and the other board members about selling off their Harken stock. The letter is dated June 15, 1990; on June 22, Bush sold off his Harken stock at a handsome profit, days before the value of the stock plummeted. This letter goes a long way towards proving that Bush participated in illegal insider trading. Further evidence is shown by Bush's letter asking for advice about selling off his stock from Harken's legal advisors, the law firm of Haynes and Boone, and their reply, which warns that any such selloff could constitute evidence of insider trading. Bush had lied to the SEC investigators, telling them that the firm told him there was no reason why Bush couldn't sell his stocks. Naturally, the letters from Bush and the legal firm are not made available to the SEC before the investigation came to an end. Bush will repeatedly claim that the SEC exonerated him of any wrongdoing, even though the SEC findings specifically say that no such exoneration of Bush can be made. Had the evidence been provided to the SEC, and had the investigation been more impartial and more aggressive, it is highly likely that Bush would have faced criminal charges over his stock selloff. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
• August 2: Iraq formally acknowledges that it possessed biological weapons at one time.

  Gulf War

  Two weeks later, the UN passes Resolution 707 demanding full disclosure of Iraq's bioweapons capabilities. (UN/Electric Venom)

 

 

• August 18: Russian President Boris Yeltsin defiantly stands atop an armored personnel carrier as part of his successful challenge to a hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

  Fall of Soviet Union

  He is credited with giving critical impetus to the growing surge of anti-Communist, pro-democracy sentiment within the Soviet Union. (Infoplease)

 

Clarence Thomas named to Supreme Court; huge nomination fight over his alleged sexual misconduct

• August - September: After Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall retires, the Bush administration chooses Clarence Thomas, head of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, to replace him.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  Thomas is a former corporate attorney with Monsanto, and served as assistant attorney general in Missouri, becoming the protege of conservative senator John Danforth. Like Robert Bork before him, Thomas, who is black and a member of the right-wing Federalist Society, is ideologically very conservative, but unlike Bork, only has two years' experience as a federal judge. The American Bar Association has refused to find him "highly qualified." The administration decides that the only way to get a hard-right conservative on the Court is to find what one member calls a "black Bork," a move designed to split Democratic opposition and gain support from civil rights partisans and Southern Democrats with large African-American constituencies. Bush's claim that Thomas is "the most qualified jurist" available is laughed off by both left and right wing observers; liberal columnist Anthony Lewis writes, "In saying that he picked Thomas because he was the best-qualified person in the country, Bush only shamed himself.... Several of the Democrats had gone into the hearings expecting to give the president leeway and vote for Thomas. But they were put off by his obvious unfamiliarity with the Supreme Court's work, his lack of demonstrated interest in it, and the paucity of his legal experience." Uncharasterically, conservative columnist George Will agrees with Lewis's assessment. Unlike Bork, who was contentious, didactic, and unapologetic about his views, Thomas is well coached by his Federalist Society confirmation team to give "middle-of-the-road" answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questions: a glaring example is his response to his views on abortion. Thomas is a virulent anti-abortion advocate, but when questioned, he answers untruthfully, "I cannot remember personally engaging" in any discussion of the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade.
• Opposition to Thomas is strong from the outset; the NAACP, the National Bar Association, the Urban League, and other civil rights organizations oppose his nomination, as do NOW and other women's rights organizations. His sister testifies that he derided her as a "welfare queen" and refused to help support his grandmother, who raised him as a child. After the Senate Judiciary Committee splits 7-7 on Thomas's nomination, and the process moves to the Senate as a whole, law professor Anita Hill testifies that Thomas sexually harassed her on numerous occasions while they worked together at the EEOC. Hill, a Republican, charges that Thomas harassed her with inappropriate discussion of sexual acts and pornographic films after she rebuffed his invitations to date him. A media frenzy quickly arises around Hill's allegations and Thomas's denials, and the administration and its allies quickly move to shore up Thomas's standing by attacking Hill with everything they can muster. Thomas, already accused of perjuring himself over his responses to his views on abortion and affirmative action, rebuffs the charges, calling the hearings "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks."
• Hill is slandered by Senator Orrin Hatch, who accuses her of stealing some of the details of her testimony from the novel The Exorcist (in reality, a Hatch aide finds a reference to "pubic hairs" in the novel, reworks the line, and claims Hill made it in an attempt to secude two college fraternity boys). Senator Arlen Specter accuses Hill of "flat-out perjury." Senator Alan Simpson makes references to derogatory personal information about Hill he receives "over the transom," allegations cooked up by Thomas's supporters. White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, one of Thomas's initial sponsors, coordinates the Republican attack on Hill's veracity; fed by questions from Gray, the senators grill Hill about every detail of her testimony in embarrasing and sometimes salacious detail. Essentially the charges boil down to Hill's word versus Thomas's; the Democratic senators on the panel fail to mount a coordinated offense against Thomas (exemplified by Ted Kennedy, who remains virtually silent during the entire hearings due to his own history of sexual dalliances, chairman Joseph Biden, who allows Republicans to virtually dominate the hearings, and Joseph Lieberman, who turns from his initial support of Hill to supporting Thomas).
• The Senate votes 52-48 to confirm Thomas as associate justice, and the extreme right gains another seat on the Court. The backlash, especially among women and African-Americans, is severe, and is widely credited with assisting Bill Clinton in winning the 1992 election as well as further galvanizing the right to become even more vicious in its style of attack politics; journalist David Brock's slanderous article for the American Spectator, "The Real Anita Hill," which is stuffed with uncorroborated accusations and outright lies and was assisted by Republican luminaries such as judge Laurence Silberman and former Thomas colleague Armstrong Williams, exemplifies the trend as well as vaults Brock into the forefront of neoconservative journalism. Brock will eventually write a book around the article, and will later repudiate both. Joe Conason later writes, "...Thomas was, in essence, an affirmative action hire of an especially cynical kind. He was selected to simulate diversity, when his real purpose was to sabotage diversity." (George Mason University, The Thomas Hearings, Wikipedia, David Brock, Joe Conason, Vincent Bugliosi)

Late Summer 1991

• Late Summer: A Bush campaign aide phones prospective candidate Bill Clinton and urges Clinton not to run.

  Election fraud

  "We think you're the only one who can beat him," he says, "and if you run this time, you will never be able to run for anything again...." (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)

Fall 1991

• Fall: Condoleezza Rice accepts a position on Chevron's Board of Directors.

  Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"

  She will hold this position until she takes the job of National Security Advisor for George W. Bush in 2000. Rice is an expert in Central Asian oil affairs; Chevron has huge investments in that region, and Rice facilitates the expansion of Chevron's influence throughout Central Asia and the Middle East during the 1990s. (CCR)

 

• Fall: Osama bin Laden, having left Afghanistan for Saudi Arabia and a reunion with his family in 1989,

  Osama bin Laden

  relocates to the Sudan. He begins plotting terrorist attacks against the US. (CCR)

 

 

• Fall: A low-level manager of the Atlanta branch of BNL, Christopher Drogoul, is indicted and charged with bank fraud involved $5.5 billion in missing assets, and his role in supplying loans to Iraq for the purchase of military supplies.

  BCCI scandal

  Drogoul insists that he was merely part of a huge US attempt to covertly fund Saddam Hussein's war efforts against Iraq, but the Justice Department refuses to pursue that line of investigation, and charges Drogoul with 347 counts of criminal behavior. Congressman Henry Gonzalez refuses to accept that Drogoul is the mastermind of the BCCI debacle, and fires off subpoena after subpoena at the White House, a variety of US intelligence agencies, and the State Department, documenting the Bush administration's illegal involvement with Iraq and demanding further evidence be provided. Gonzalez's subpoenas are largely ignored. The investigation does give Presidential candidate Bill Clinton the wherewithal to level the damning charge that the Bush administration was guilty of "coddling dictators." Eventually Drogoul will accept a plea bargain agreement with the Clinton Justice Department; that department chose to ignore the charge of a federal judge that Drogoul and his partners were "pawns and bit players" in a secret deal to provide Iraq with arms and funding. (CCR, Iran Chamber Society)

September 1991

• September 11: The UN passes Resolution 715, ordering ongoing weapons inspections in Iraq.

  Gulf War

  The Hussein government declares the inspections illegal. (UN/Electric Venom)

 

 

• September 21: IAEA inspectors find numerous documents describing Iraq's nuclear program.

  Gulf War

  Iraqi soldiers grab some documents directly from the hands of an inspector. Iraq refuses to let the inspectors leave the site with the remaining items. The inspectors wait for four days at the site until the Security Council threatens action. Iraq relents and the inspectors are allowed to leave. (UN/Electric Venom)

October 1991

• October: Bush "decides" to run for re-election.

  George H.W. Bush

  He decides to run as a Texan instead of a resident of Maine, so he spends three days in a Houston apartment to establish residency. Texas also has no income tax, which saves Bush $52,000. (Bushwatch)

 

• October:

  George W. Bush

  Bush family business associate Fred Malek arranges a complex deal that in essence has the state of Texas buy land for a new staduim, while George W. Bush and other Rangers investor retain almost all of the profits. Malek has already arranged with the Carlyle Group for George W. Bush to serve on the board of directors of Caterair, one of the country's largest airline catering firms. (Bushwatch)
• October 1: Former Marine colonel Oliver North publishes his memoir, Under Fire.

  Iran-Contra scandal

  In it he confesses that everyone in the Reagan administration knew what Reagan had ordered concerning the Iran-Contra dealings: "At the time, it seemed that selling a small amount of arms to Iran was worth the risk to make it all work. But a quid pro quo arrangement of arms for hostages? This placed all of us in a moral quandary. Human life is sacrosanct, but making what people would inevitably see as concessions to terrorists was a terrible idea -- especially since it violated our prohibition on arms sales to Iran." North, who was the point man in the Reagan administration's conspiracy to deal with Iranian terrorists and lied about his role to Congress, will go on to make a career as a tough-talking conservative radio and TV show host, and make plenty of hay from accusing Democrats and liberals about being soft on terrorism. (Oliver North/Joe Conason)
• October 3: Arkansas governor Bill Clinton announces his intention to run for president of the United States.

  Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"

  A few days later, former nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers, who insists that she and Clinton had a long, torrid love affair five years earlier, begins phoning Clinton and secretly taping the conversations. She complains that the libel lawsuit filed against Clinton by disgruntled former employee Larry Nichols is ruining her life. Clinton and Flowers discuss Clinton's political enemies, Arkansas Republicans Sheffield Nelson and Tommy Robinson; Flowers tells Clinton that she heard Robinson, a former sheriff, say, "I don't know anything about [Clinton's sex life, the subject of many rumors around Arkansas, and the real focus of Nichols's lawsuit], but I'll tell you one thing, Sheffield Nelson makes Clinton look like the pope." She also warns Clinton that Nelson is in constant contact with local reporters, spreading gossip and innuendo about Clinton. Most interesting is her claim that Ron Fuller, a GOP state representative, and Republican financier J.J. Vigneault, both Robinson backers, have offered Flowers $50,000 and a job in California if she will go public about her tale of her affair with Clinton. (While Flowers is unable to prove either Republican's actual participation in the offer, Clinton has no problem believing her, because of both men's far-right politics and their dislike of Clinton. Flowers doesn't mention that she worked on Fuller's losing 1990 Congressional campaign and donated $1000 to him.) Flowers attempts to goad Clinton into a sexual conversation by saying she will tell inquisitive reporters, "I'll just tell them you eat good p*ssy." Clinton fails to respond. He ends the conversation by asking Flowers to call him again with any more news of Republican plotting. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
• October 7: Iran-Contra defendant Elliott Abrams pleads guilty to withholding information from Congress.

  Iran-Contra scandal

  Abrams will later take a position with the second Bush administration. (Federation of American Scientists)

 

 

• October 15: Clarence Thomas is sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  (See above for information about his confirmation hearings.) Famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi sums up many observers' feelings about Thomas when he writes in 2001 that Thomas "more than lived up to his meager reputation, becoming a dutiful mynah bird, without his own independent voice, of Justice Antonin Scalia." (Wikipedia, Vincent Bugliosi)
• October 25: UNSCOM issues its first report claiming it has "sufficient information to have a general picture of Iraq's capabilities and facilities in all the areas concerned."

  Gulf War

  In the nuclear field, IAEA inspections identified clandestine chemical, centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation as well as laboratory-scale plutonium separation for uranium enrichment. IAEA also found conclusive evidence of a nuclear weapons development site geared to produce an implosion-type nuclear weapon deliverable by surface-to-surface missile. A subsequent report on December 17 says that Iraq is concealing information by hiding it or burying it in the desert. The report claims UNSCOM had seized and destroyed most of the hidden items, including documents on a nuclear program. (UN/Iraqwatch/Electric Venom)
• October 27 - 29: A Portuguese parliamentary delegation slated to investigate the human rights atrocities in East Timor cancels its plans to come, succumbing to pressure from the US and Australia, whose governments are both deeply complicit in the sixteen-year genocide of the Timorese by the Indonesian military.

  East Timor rebellion

  The Indonesian military responds with the murder of a sixteen-year old boy who dared ring a church bell after dark. The murder of the boy, Sebastiao Gomes, sparks a deep outrage among the Timorese, who gather by the hundreds to the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili. A military spokesman warns the people, "If you speak to the UN delegation, we will kill you after they leave. We will kill your family to the seventh generation." US backing for the Indonesian regime is secure, and based largely on the fact that US corporations have long used Indonesia and East Timor as sources of cheap labor and products. Chevron and Texaco are two US oil companies with long-standing relations with the Indonesian governments, along with heavy investments in Indonesia. Footwear companies Nike, Adidas, and Reebok have long used cheap Indonesian labor as a source for manufacturing their products. (BBC/East Timor Timeline, Amy Goodman and David Goodman)

November 1991

• November: Neil Bush bails out of Apex Energy after collecting $320,000 in salary and expenses.

  Bush family

  Like his former partners in JNB, his partners in Apex are left to deal with the company's tremendous debts. (Bushwatch)

 

 

• November 12: Indonesian troops massacre at least 271 East Timorese who are gathered for the funeral of Sebastiao Gomes, a young protester murdered by Indonesian police.

  East Timor rebellion

  Two American journalists, Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, attempt to cover the massacre; both are threatened with death by soldiers, and Nairn is severely wounded when a soldier strikes him in the head with a gun butt. Later called the Santa Cruz Massacre by the Timorese, it is not the first or the largest massacre of Timorese citizens by Indonesian troops, but it is the first to be witnessed by Western journalists. Predicatably, none of the major American media outlets choose to air a story about the massacre, but a British cameraman, Max Stahl, shoots video footage that is aired in Europe and Asia, sparking tremendous public outrage. Nine days after the massacre, CBS chooses to air some of Stahl's footage, marking the first time in 16 years that a major American news outlet has covered a story from East Timor. The belated media coverage sparks a worldwide movement dedicated to freeing the people of East Timor, and against the wishes of both Democratic and Republican administrations, American military aid to Indonesia is severely curtailed. (BBC/East Timor Timeline, Amy and David Goodman)
• November 15: John Poindexter's convictions in the Iran-Contra scandal are reversed on appeal

  Iran-Contra scandal

  due to his previous grant of Congressional immunity. (Federation of American Scientists)

December 1991

Dissolution of USSR

• December: The Soviet Union finally collapses, creating a number of new countries, many with vocal Muslim and other populations who want representation, and some that come into the world with a full-blown nuclear arsenal.

  Fall of Soviet Union

  Over the next six years, major US oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron, directly invest billions in these Central Asian nations, bribing heads of state to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. However, these companies face the problem of having to pay steep prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines to get the oil out. These oil fields have an estimated $6 trillion potential value; US companies own approximately 75% of the rights. (SFGate, From the Wilderness, CCR)
• December:

  Middle East peace process

  In Israel, Labour forms a coalition with the left-wing Meretz and several religious parties to form a new coalition government with Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister. Rabin is determined to further the Middle East peace process as well as speed the immigration of Russian Jews into Israel. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)

 

• December: Gennifer Flowers calls Clinton at the governor's mansion again, and secretly records the call.

  Whitewater / Lewinsky and related "scandals"

  She has recordings from four phone calls in total. All of the calls revolve around the same topics: the lawsuit from Clinton-basher Larry Nichols, in which Flowers is named as a witness; the political shenanigans of Sheffield Nelson and other Arkansas Republicans; and her supposed fear of the tabloid press. On the tapes, Clinton is oddly distant and formal for a supposed former lover, and Flowers seems unaware of Clinton's seasonal bouts with allergies. Flowers claims someone has broken into her apartment and searched for something, presumably incriminating evidence against Clinton. (She never files a police report, and years later, will claim, preposterously, that Clinton himself oversaw the break-in.) In none of the calls does Clinton say anything remotely sexual, though Flowers makes a number of coarsely sexual remarks apparently designed to draw him out. He does mention an earlier conversation with right-wing journalist Bill Sammons, where he describes himself as "retired" from his youthful womanizing. Clinton has no idea that Flowers will doctor and edit the tapes to make it seem as if she and Clinton had engaged in sexual repartee. (Joe Conason and Gene Lyons)
• December 15: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev formally dissolves the Soviet Union. (PBS)
• As an interesting sidebar, NSC official Condoleezza Rice, who is Bush's advisor on the Soviet Union, costs herself some credibility when she and a group of NSC officials fight to limit Bush's support of Gorbachev's efforts to guide the USSR out of Soviet-style communism.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  Rice is part of a faction that believe the USSR will remain intact and repudiate Gorbachev's efforts to dissolve the Union. When she is named National Security Director for the second Bush administration, it is without the confidence of Vice President Cheney and senior defense officials Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. (Laura Flanders)

1991-1995

• In an operation reminiscent of the Iran-Contra affair, the US military secretly breaks an arms embargo during the war in Yugoslavia by channeling arms through radical Muslim groups to Croatia and Bosnia.

  Balkan conflict in Yugoslavia

  Arms bought by Iran and Turkey, and financed by Saudi Arabia, are flown in; mujaheddin fighters are also flown into the region. Instead of monitoring the arms embargo, the US is involved in a flagrant breach of the agreement. Some veteran observers speculate on Osama bin Laden's involvement; it is possible that he had an agreement with the US to help supply the Bosnians and Croatians. At this point, the alliance between bin Laden and the CIA is still solid. (CCR)

1991-present

• The use of spent- and depleted-uranium shells by the US and British forces in Iraq causes the deaths of thousands from radiation poisoning and radiation-related illnesses, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and others.

  Gulf War

  Because of economic sanctions, Iraq does not have the money or resources to decontaminate the battlefields from 1991, and the US and Britain block all efforts to provide support or assistance for sick and dying Iraqis. One reason is alleged to be the rationale among American and British leaders that the drugs used to treat the illnesses could somehow be converted into biological weapons. These drugs included morphine and nitrous oxide, as well as other materials such as baby food, pencils (because of their graphite content), paper, and wheelbarrows. Sixteen heart and lung machines were barred from being brought in to Iraqi hospitals because they contain computer chips. A fleet of ambulances was held up because their equipment included vacuum flasks, which keep medical supplies cold; vacuum flasks are designated "dual use" by the Sanctions Committee, meaning they could possibly be used in weapons manufacture. Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday estimates the loss of life as well over a million, mostly women, children, and the elderly. 167 Iraqi children die every day from preventable causes. (ZNet, US/Iraq Relations Timeline)

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