Iraq's Invasion Of Kuwait
...Iraq invaded Kuwait, Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign
minister said: "The leadership was focusing domestically on rebuilding
the country, those cities and towns that had been destroyed during the
war… improving the standard of living for people in Iraq."
Iraq may have invaded Kuwait because of the oil policy pursued by
Kuwait. Kuwait was deliberately producing oil far beyond its OPEC
quota. This brought down the price of oil per barrel into the low $
teens. Iraq needed the price of oil to stay high per barrel because it
was vital to its recovery after the war it had just had with Iran.
Iraq tried to reverse this policy with the help of Saudi Arabia and
Egypt but to no avail. Each one-dollar drop in the price of oil cost
the Iraqi nation one billion dollars. So Iraq could claim that Kuwait
was waging an economic war upon Iraq. Iraq saw their invasion of
Kuwait as a defensive move, one to stop Iraq losing all its money from
the falling oil prices.
Iraq also considered Kuwait as a part of Iraq. After failing to invade
Iran, Saddam Hussein may have thought it would be easier to conquer
weaker nations.
[IMAGE]
Iraqi troops preparing for their invasion of Kuwait
2. Why Did The Coalition Attack Iraq?
Iraq had invaded Kuwait and Kuwait had called for help from the UN.
The Bush Administration constructed a rationale that stated that they
were going to war based on the following reasons:
1) Iraq had violated international laws by invading a sovereign
country.
2) Iraq had amassed troops and tanks and was set to invade Saudi
Arabia.
3) As Congress was deliberating on a vote to grant the President
authorisation to use force (12 January, 1991), a story surfaced that
Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators that they were
stealing and had left these babies to die on the floor of the
hospital. This story made the headlines...
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