Was Iraq going to attack Saudi?

Okay, let’s try this again…

Taking a page from the “duped thread”, one of the reasons for the Gulf War was that it looked like Iraq was getting ready to go into Saudi Arabia.

Did Saddam ever have designs on Saudi Arabia like he did for Iraq’s lost Kuwaiti province?

Were troops really massing along the border for a thrust?

Since the incubator story has been more or less proven false, what’s the straight dope on the imminent Saudi attack? Looking back, was our intelligence correct?

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/desert_shield.htm

http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/gulf/timeline.html

Groan. Gotta go link hunting again. Read some article linked here about how a commercial sattelite shot of the alleged Iraqi buildup showed nothing there. Anybody out there got that one?

This issue can’t honestly be classified as myth, but there have been some important questions raised about its validity. We have claims from the U.S. government. They say they have satelite evidence. Some say that this evidence has never been publically released (security reasons). I’m not sure about that (can’t find enough evidence on it). Others say that Russian commercial satelite images show no troops in the area where the U.S. claims. But I’ve never seen THIS evidence either.

My inclination is that it would be pretty hard to cover-up swaths of empty desert: many many people in the U.S. military would have to use the satelite info to plan their positions and strategy: that means a pretty wide range of people that would have to have kept silent about it or fooled. That’s a little implausible.

Here are some things that should probably be checked up on: were U.S. positions fortified for an assault on or from a nearby ground based enemy? Or were they set up to hit targets much farther away (since there wasn’t really anything nearby, as claimed). Where did all these massing troops and vehicles go as the conflict evolved? Did they quickly retreat back into central Kuwait? Were they there for a while, engaging U.S. troops or taking fire from the air? Is there any detailed data on all the engagement/targets of the war in that area? Were there any?

Regarding the satellite photos:

The photos were taken by a Soviet commercial satellite. Search google for phrases like “Saudi…satellite…soviet” or gulf war…soviet satellite photos" etc, you’ll find lots of hits.

The photos were sent to all the major news outlets including ABC, CBS but none of them went with the story because it seemed to contradict the official government line so strongly.

In the end, the St Petersburg Times in Florida was the first newspaper to publish the story. It took me a while but I managed to find the original archived story.

The Iraqi build-up was nowhere near the numbers claimed at the time by the US government. So the US tricked King Fahd of Saudi into allowing US soldiers into his country.

Saddam had assured Fahd that he was only going to invade Kuwait not Saudi and Fahd believed him - he didn’t particularly mind Iraq taking Kuwait. It was only because the US convinced Fahd that Saddam was massing troops in order to invade Saudi that Fahd got jumpy.

I’m not exactly inclined to believe that the major news outlets would refuse a story just because it didn’t fit the party line (no matter how much moola that war made them). My first response is to wonder if maybe the story isn’t as compelling or well-backed up as its made out to be. That’s just a first feeling: from reading the article it seems like there should be lots more to talk about than just this, but the issue seems mostly to have been dropped.

Regardless of Iraqi deployment along the Saudi border (or lack thereof), we can’t know whether or not Saddam Hussein actually intended to invade. However, what we do know, I think, suggests that Hussein had no such intention. Specifically, we know that he did not in fact invade Saudi Arabia, though the time to do so would have been immediately after his Kuwaiti gains were solidified. If what I’ve read is accurate, The Saudis would not have been able to defeat Iraq’s army. If Saddam had plans to invade, why in the world would he stop and wait for the Saudis to mobilize and/or call for help? It’s not as if his army was battered from the conquest of Kuwait.

Furthermore, while Saddam apparently believed that he could annex Kuwait and get away with hit, it would have been simply ridiculous to assume that he could also annex (or even attack) Saudi Arabia without a massive response from the West, as well as other Arab states in the region.

Yeah, what VarlosZ said.
He could have just rolled on into Saudi-Arabia, if he really had wanted to.
Three cheers for Hoegaarden, btw.

One point to ponder – the concept of “massed on the border” in this circumstance is a pretty useless one. Kuwait is the size of New Jersey. If you send a couple hundred thousand troops out of New York into New Jersey, you are, pretty much by definition, massing your troops on the border of Pennsylvania - from anywhere in New Jersey, your troops can quickly march into Philadelphia.

Sua