Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

The relationship between Iraq and Kuwait became terminally hostile when, after the war ended, Kuwait sold its oil for prices lower than OPEC standards and increased its production at rates exceeding OPEC regulations, drilling in disputed border territory with Iraq. To Saddam, the U.S.’s alignment with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait constituted acts of theft, aggression and economic warfare that, he said, violated and deprived Iraqis of their basic human rights and standard of living. UN sanctions had effectively deprived Iraq of 70% of their food supply and, in turn, the Iraqi government imposed food rationing upon its civilian population. The offenses of the U.S. were all the more egregious, Saddam protested, because for the past eight years Iraqis had shed “rivers of blood” to secure the stability of the Gulf region and protect the interests of the U.S. and its allied Arab nations.