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Professor Donaldson pursed her lips quickly, several times in succession. Her eyes were narrowed somewhat. Both of these physical features seemed to be external markers for an internal process of focus.

She arched her eyebrows, and her face appeared to have a quality that suggested she were considering various possibilities. Sharing these with her audience, she began: "One might reasonably anticipate that in the relatively few hours which a few Divisions of the Iraqi army would have needed to travel the roughly 175 miles to the Dhahran oil field complex from the border, the Iraqis already would have pretty much secured the area and been chowing down before the US would have been able to evaluate, coordinate, plan and launch an offensive of any kind even capable of reaching Dhahran, let alone be able to accomplish anything of an effective nature.

"In point of fact, the United States required 119 hours of preparation before it was ready to get Desert Shield off the ground. Roughly 19 hours were needed by the US in 1989 to prepare for its invasion of tiny Panama.

"Even using the latter, much shorter preparation time rather than the former, much longer prep time, the United States would have been in a difficult situation if Iraq had decided to invade Saudi Arabia. In my opinion, I believe the Iraqis were aware of this, and, therefore, if they didn't invade Saudi Arabia when they had the golden opportunity to do so, it is because, contrary to popular public opinion in the West, they never had the intention of invading Saudi Arabia."

Quickly expanding on, as well as attempting to fortify, her ideas, she followed up on her earlier points: "If I were a brutal dictator really intent on conquering the Middle East and bringing the West to its knees, then, by quickly invading Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, I would have accomplished two strategic objectives. First, I would have, at least for a time, a stranglehold on most of the world's oil reserves and, therefore, would have been in a position to deal with the rest of the world from strength. Secondly, by conquering Kuwait and, especially, Saudi Arabia, my tactical situation would have created tremendous problems for both the Arab world and the West to respond to militarily.

"Among other things, the Coalition forces would not have been permitted to do to Saudi Arabia what they did to Baghdad and the rest of Iraq without encountering serious political, economic and social repercussions. Getting a conquering army out of Saudi Arabia would have presented a very different set of problems for Coalition leaders than getting such an army out of just Kuwait.

"On the other hand, although Iraq might have been capable of over-running both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and, therefore, in the short run, creating many problems for the world, I do not believe Iraq would have been able to hold those countries even against a Coalition of countries from just the Middle East. After all, consider for a moment the fact that Iraq had been unable to defeat Iran despite receiving the support of the United States, the Soviet Union and most of the other countries of the Middle East. Consequently, if only Egypt, Syria and Iran, with, perhaps, help from Turkey and, maybe even, Israel, were to co-ordinate an attack against Iraq, I think Iraq would have had a very difficult time of retaining control of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."

Dr. Donaldson had an expression on her face that seemed to indicate she was tired of such talk or, perhaps, that she had strayed too far afield. She made a sort of dismissive gesture with her hands, more to herself, possibly, than to anyone in the audience.

"In any event, if we leave such speculative scenarios aside, then there are a number of other considerations which undermine the contention that Iraq was intent on either swallowing up a number of Middle East countries or on bringing the West to its knees. For example, since the first Gulf war, the fact is, Iraq had developed much closer and more cordial relationships with a number of countries, including the United States.

"America had given Iraq considerable help during the Iran-Iraq war, despite being rather duplicitous toward Iraq in the Iran-Contra fiasco. Furthermore, as I indicated earlier, the United States had become Iraq's number one trading partner just prior to the second Gulf War.

"The United States had made billions of dollars in loans and credits available to the Iraqis. America also had helped Iraq to rebuild its military capabilities.

"Iraq wanted to be treated with respect and fairness by the United States. For the most part, things were moving in this direction.

"Iraq did have serious differences with the US over their respective policies concerning Israel and the Palestinians. Quite frankly, however, I don't believe the Iraqis would have considered it in their best interests to jeopardize their developing relationship with the United States by going on an imperialistic binge in the Middle East.

"I believe the second Gulf came about like most wars. A combination of misunderstanding, mis-communication, miscalculation, stubbornness, pride, posturing, stupidity, selfishness and blindness was exhibited by parties on all sides of the Gulf War issue.

"Iraq, despite all its faults, is not the enemy in the Gulf War. We are all the enemy.

"We all collectively join in to create mess after mess in both international and domestic affairs. The second Gulf War is not an exception to this central truth of world events. It is, regrettably, a most horrendous exemplar of what I am maintaining.

"Let me make one last comment in wrapping up my answer to your follow-up question Dr. Clarke. Everyone is convinced that allowing the control of much of the world's oil supplies to fall into the hands of countries like Iraq or Iran would be disastrous. I wouldn't wish to take issue with such a contention.

"At the same time, I'm not convinced the interests of the vast majority of the people of the Earth are better served, ultimately, by having control of much of the world's oil supplies in the hands of the United States. The governmental, military and corporate institutions of the United States are not necessarily the benign force of goodness that their spin-doctors try to convince everyone is the case. Indeed, one could easily say the same thing about the governmental, military and corporate institutions of almost every country on the face of the earth - namely, in reality, all of these organizations and institutions serve their own interests, but they try to convince themselves and others that serving such government, military and corporate interests really serves the interests of all, or serves the greatest good, and this is almost never the case."

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