On April 13th, 1993, George H. W. Bush was targeted in an assassination plot when he visited Kuwait to commemorate the coalition's victory over Iraq in the Gulf War. This happened 25 months after U.S.-led forces chased Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War and three months after Bush Sr. surrendered the White House to Bill Clinton.
The terrorists were believed to be working for Saddam Hussein when they smuggled bombs into Kuwait. The plot was foiled when Kuwaiti officials found the bomb and arrested 17 people who were allegedly involved in using a car bomb in an attempt to kill Bush. Two of the suspects, Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali and Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, retracted their confessions at the trial. They claimed that their confessions were extracted by repeated beatings. At the time, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed strong doubts that the trials could be fair, noting that it had received credible reports of severe beatings meted out to defendants accused of capital crimes in Kuwait.
The FBI established that the plot had been directed by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. A Kuwaiti court later convicted all but one of the defendants.
Two months after the attack, then-president Bill Clinton responded by launching a cruise missile attack on an Iraqi intelligence building in Baghdad. The plot was used as one of the justifications for the Iraq Resolution, which authorized the use of the United States Armed Forces against Saddam Hussein's Iraq government in what would be known as Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The day before the strike, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright went before the Security Council to present evidence of the Iraqi plot.
Then Vice President Al Gore said the attack "was intended to be a proportionate response at the place where this plot" to assassinate Bush "was hatched and implemented"
A closer look at the plot, in light of the findings by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the special team of experts that spent 15 months investigating Baghdad's WMD programs, brings forth doubts that Saddam was behind it.
According to the report, Saddam was convinced that the CIA had thoroughly penetrated his regime, even though they hadn't. This led him to believe they would know not only that he had dismantled his WMD, but also would know about his plans for important intelligence operations. So if Saddam thought that the CIA would probably know of the assassination attempt ahead of time, why would he order it in the first place?
Also according to the report, while Saddam derived ''prestige'' from being an enemy of the U.S., he also considered it to be ''equally prestigious for him to be an ally of the United States, and regular entreaties were made during the last decade to explore this alternative''.
The report stated that high ranking Iraqis made proposals through intermediaries for dialogue with Washington.
''Baghdad offered flexibility on many issues, including offers to assist in the Israel- Palestine conflict. Moreover, in informal discussions, senior officials allowed that, if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programs and/or ambitions,'' it added.
The report even concluded that Iraq was willing to be Washington's ''best friend".
Saddam was bewildered at Bush's and Clinton's lack of interest according to the report.
"Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination'', notes Gregory Thielmann, a former senior State Department analyst who specialized in Iraq's WMD programs. ''If his top priority was getting the (UN economic) sanctions lifted, then it doesn't follow that he would try to kill the president of the United States.''
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