1991 Uprisings in Iraq - U.S. Non-intervention Controversy

U.S. Non-intervention Controversy

Many Iraqi and American critics of President George H. W. Bush accused the president and his administration of encouraging and abandoning the rebellion after halting UN Coalition forces at Iraq's southern border with Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War. Soon after the uprisings began, fears of a disintegrating Iraq led the Bush Administration to distance itself from the rebels. American military officials downplayed the significance of the revolts and spelled out a policy of non-intervention in Iraq's internal affairs.

On March 5, Rear Admiral John Michael McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged "chaotic and spontaneous" uprisings were under way in 13 cities of Iraq, but stated the Pentagon's view that Saddam would prevail because of the rebels' "lack of organization and leadership." On the same day, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said "it would be very difficult for us to hold the coalition together for any particular course of action dealing with internal Iraqi politics, and I don't think, at this point, our writ extends to trying to move inside Iraq." U.S. Major General Martin Brandtner, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added, "there is no move on the U.S. forces...to let any weapons slip through, or to play any role whatsoever in fomenting or assisting any side." Consequently, U.S. forces still in Iraq, stationed a few miles from Basra, Nasiriyah and Samawah, did nothing to help them when they and random civilians were being killed in the reported "brutal" attacks by Saddam's loyalists. The U.S. Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher said on March 6, "We don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." The Bush Administration accused Iran of sending arms to the rebels and sternly warned Iraqi authorities on March 7 against the use of chemical weapons during the unrest, but equivocated use of helicopter gunships. The question of helicopters was also ignored in the ceasefire agreement of March 3, which prohibited Iraqi use of fixed-wing aircraft over the country.

On April 2, in a carefully crafted statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said, "We never, ever, stated as either a military or a political goal of the coalition or the international community the removal of Saddam Hussein." President Bush himself insisted three days later, just as the Iraqi loyalist forces were putting down the last resistance in the cities:

In 2011, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffrey, apologized for the U.S. abandonment of the 1991 revolution, adding, "At the least, from what we are facing now, this would have been a much better solution than the solution of 2003. The role of Iraq’s people would have been fundamental, not like in 2003." A spokesman for a top Shia religious leader, Ayatollah Basheer Hussain Najafi, commented, "The apology of the U.S. has come too late, and does not change what happened. The apology is not going to bring back to the widows their husbands, and bereaved mothers their sons and brothers that they lost in the massacre that followed the uprising."