had united his country by marrying a daughter from each of the region's thirty-odd tribes, Fahd Ibn Saud presides over a tribal form of government - one whose priorities do not include a democratic vote or written guarantees of individual rights.
Faced by the prospect of the public's sudden confrontation with the true face of two of America's Middle Eastern allies, Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, addressed the United States' interest in the crisis in the most realistic terms at first. They noted that the primary motive for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was economic: burden by a crushing international debt left over from the just-ended ten year war with Iran, Iraq's major creditor was Kuwait. Moreover, State Department officials pointed out, Iraq's only hope of pulling out of debt was to raise the price of oil by having an OPEC-wide curtailment of production - a proposal that was agreed to by the OP
...