The Achilles Trap Quotes

“The police seemed fixated on a mysterious incident that had taken place earlier that year in France. On the night of April 6, 1979, in La Seyne-sur-Mer, on the French Mediterranean coast, saboteurs had broken into a warehouse and blown up sections of the new nuclear reactors that were to be installed at Tuwaitha. Shahristani had looked into the case and had concluded (correctly, as it turned out) that Israel’s Mossad intelligence service had mounted the attack to set back Iraq’s nuclear capabilities.”
― Steve Coll, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

“One of King Hussein’s skeptical advisers had warned him “to expect a half-baked presentation” at the C.I.A. The spy agency briefers would cloak their lack of knowledge about the internal situation in Iraq “through the use of elaborate graphs, charts, and presentational aids.” Even in these early days of PowerPoint’s hegemony over Washington, an overload of colorfully designed but cluttered and questionably relevant information was a common feature of intelligence briefings.”
― Steve Coll, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

“The talking points would spell out American policy in light of the Iraqi threats. Mack reviewed the document and passed it upstairs for clearance at higher levels at State and the White House. He received no edits and heard no concerns. “We remain determined to ensure the free flow of oil,” the final statement said. “We also remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the Gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties.” The reference to unnamed “friends” was intended to include Kuwait, even though the U.S. had no formal defense pact with the kingdom. “The United States takes no position on the substance of the bilateral issues concerning Iraq and Kuwait,” the document stated. This had been the default U.S. position for decades. Still, Washington was “committed” to the “sovereignty and integrity of the Gulf states.” With some effort, this phrasing could be read as a threat to use force if the Gulf states were attacked. Yet it was all deliberately vague—a plain vanilla flavor of professional diplomacy-speak.[29] Mack”
― Steve Coll, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq