Abstract

The Peace Feeler That Was

In the official history of Desert Storm there is no place for second thoughts, just as there was no place for them in the policy-making that led to the final carnage on the road from Kuwait. It might have been otherwise, as an excavation of the conflict's hidden history, the spurning of diplomacy, discloses. On August 9, a week after Iraq's invasion, two Arab-American businessmen then in Baghdad, Iraq, Michael Saba and Samir Vincent, staged an escape from Iraq, carrying with them a negotiation proposal for Washington that might have offered the best chance for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Although it cannot be known for sure whether a positive U.S. response in August would have averted war, the back-channel proposal was a practical offer, containing none of the posturing that characterized many of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's public statements.