World Notes Diplomacy

When she appeared before House and Senate panels last March, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, persuaded their members that she had talked tough to Saddam Hussein in the days before he invaded Kuwait. "I hope my credibility is at least as great as Saddam Hussein's," she told the Senators then. Contradicting the Iraqi leader's derisive account, she insisted that she had firmly warned him that the U.S. would not tolerate the use of force against Kuwait.

Not so, say Senators who have now seen the cables she sent back to the State Department in those critical days. Instead of a spirited defense of U.S. interests, Senators found waffling and appeasement. "No place does ((Glaspie)) report clearly delivering the kind of warning she described in her testimony to the committee," said Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. California Democratic Senator Alan Cranston charged that she "deliberately misled Congress about her role."