wrong. he comes to power in the beginning of 1989. ronald reagan had gotten mikel gorbachev to sign a nuclear arms treaty, interrange missiles, had done things to begin to end the cold war. the berlin wall was still up. eastern europe was locked in the soviet orbit, and it fell to george bush to coax goto bring to completion. saddam hussein invades kuwait. george bush knew what this meant in the first test of the cold war world, a un member has been invaded and the george bush goes saying i know you re anxious about the after math of vietnam, which is a tragedy and a failure, but it s worthwhile to send americans around the globe to defend a country you may not have heard of and then conducts a six-week successful war.
treating have been milking their country for years. let s bring in the cnn global affairs vice president, scholar at the woodrow wilson national center here in washington. this is a major development right now. but give us first of all some historic perspective aaron, you studied the middle east for a long time, worked in the state department for years on the middle east. how big of a deal is this? it s huge. i ve watched the saudis for four years and both with respect to what mahammad is doing inside the kingdom and his risk readiness outside in lebanon against qatar and iran and yemen. middle eastern leaders simply don t behave this way. they look in the rear-view mirror instead of looking forward and there are few examples where saddam hussein invades kuwait. the middle east is usually colored wolf, as you know in
i can t this is president bush speaking i can t be off in a corner falling on my ideological sword. at that point as well as you know, you write about in 41, it s october, and what june 27th, 1990, is when the no new taxes pledge was broken and the statement was released. august 2nd, 1990, saddam invades kuwait. the budget negotiations roll in to columbus day. the last thing george herbert walker bush is going to do is put the trips in the field at risk with a government shutdown, a possible market dip when he has americans in harm s way. and gingrich went to him, gingrich told me this, gingrich went to him and said, just don t do it now. take the pledge back, go into the midterms in november and say, if you want a tax increase, you vote for the democrats, if you want lower taxes, vote for the republicans. and i honestly don t think that was in your father s imaginative
but in real time, we have the documents, we know he did it. george herbert walker bush struck that deal at andrew s air force base in 1990 and knew it would probably cost him the election. it wasn t a maybe this will be bad, maybe this will be rough. this was, i m doing this because it s right, it s going to break the base, i may pay with the job may cost me. and then that got sort of lost because of what happened on the 2nd of august, 1990, saddam invades kuwait and then the narrative shifts. george h.w. bush knew in the back of his mind, that what he had done could cost him his job. how many people in office today will do something, explicitly on the day they do it, say i m going to do it right even if it costs me my job. walter isaacson, courageous moments have consequences. he did that in 1990. the democrats, against the advice of people like myself,
oliver: in the wake of vietnam war everything changed. the military man said later on never before in the history of war reporting has a group of correspondents by constant distortion and lies and emphasis centered upon their own country s army. oliver: the days of total access and free movement for journalists were gone. 1983 grenada. journalists are barred from the island until three days after the invasion. 1990, iraq invades kuwait. loot of it appears like a video game. you see air strikes and you see cruise missiles taking off and