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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the United States is "not doing bad at all" diplomatically, despite anti-American sentiment over the war in Iraq. "If you stand back a bit," Powell told an audience at the University at Buffalo, "you might see we have done very well in most parts of the world." Powell, a guest in the university's Distinguished Speakers Series, outlined strides made in Europe, China and Asia, and predicted nuclear disputes with North Korea and Iran would be solved diplomatically. Although Powell last month called his prewar speech to the United Nations accusing Iraq of...

Laurie Mylroie writes: An "Iraq News" subscriber, Pierre Legrand, has posted the following on his website. "Iraq News" has verified it is an accurate reproduction of the NYT report. On July 25, 1990, on the eve of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein warned US Ambasssador April Glaspie: "We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you." THE NEW YORK TIMES...

April in July On July 25, 1990, eight days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a quiet, largely unreported meeting took place between Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, which has since been destroyed by the war. The transcript of this meeting is as follows: U.S. Ambassador Glaspie: "I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I have lived here for years...

An article of faith among most Arab policymakers is that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a yellow-to-green light to invade Kuwait in 1990. Some of them will concede, albeit off the record, the yellow light was probably inadvertent and a reflection of inept diplomacy. Others state flatly, also off the record, that it had switched from yellow to green and that it was deliberate. The option of a U.S. red light that signaled clearly "do not cross the Kuwaiti border" is dismissed out of hand. No such signal was ever given by the U.S. There is also much evidence that...

<p>An article of faith among most Arab policymakers is that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a yellow-to-green light to invade Kuwait in 1990. Some of them will concede, albeit off the record, the yellow light was probably inadvertent and a reflection of inept diplomacy. Others state flatly, also off the record, that it had switched from yellow to green and that it was deliberate.</p>

By now my enthusiasm for the liberation of Iraq is clear enough, I hope, that I can take a day to rain on the parade. As impressive as the current campaign is, American policy in dealing with Saddam Hussein has been a bipartisan chamber of horrors. Consider for example the Clinton administration low point, extensively described in Robert Baer's CIA memoir, "See No Evil." Mr. Baer headed a small CIA team in Northern Iraq in 1995, in contact with the two Kurdish factions as well as with Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and a defecting Iraqi general, Wafiq...