Long-simmering Iraqi-American tensions came to a boil on June 26, when the United States launched 23 cruise missiles against the Baghdad headquarters of Iraq's foremost intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat. President Bill Clinton ordered the attack after receiving compelling evidence from the FBI and the CIA that Iraqi intelligence officers had mounted an abortive assassination attempt against former President George Bush during Bush's April visit to Kuwait. Washington initially was skeptical of Kuwait's claim that the 13 Iraqis and 3 Kuwaitis arrested in Kuwait had plotted to detonate a car bomb to kill Bush and his traveling party, which included Barbara Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker. Some U.S. officials suspected that the apparently slipshod terrorist operation was aimed at Kuwaiti targets to disrupt the Bush visit. Others suspected that the Kuwaiti government had coerced two of the ringleaders into "confessing" that Bush was the target in order to inflame Iraqi-American tensions, thereby guaranteeing the nervous Kuwaitis continued U.S. support at a time when the Clinton administration's willingness to confront Saddam Hussein was open to question.
The Clinton administration initially adopted a low-key, non-committal posture on the question of an American response. The White House withheld comment while it awaited the official report of a counterterrorism investigation team dispatched to Kuwait in May to evaluate the evidence of the Iraqi plot. This cautious approach was understandable in the early phases of the investigation, given the grave nature of the charges. Once the investigators' preliminary conclusions became known, however, Clinton appeared to want to avoid a direct confrontation with Saddam.
The administration forced to act
U.S. investigators concluded that Baghdad was implicated in the attempted bombing because of three types of evidence: interviews with the suspects, forensic evidence, and other corroborating intelligence information. The two suspects who had confessed to attempting to assassinate Bush told the same story down to the smallest detail and showed no sign of torture. The sophisticated 175-pound bomb, built into a Toyota Land Cruiser, bore the same tell-tale markings that had been found in previous Iraqi car bombs. The CIA also accumulated classified evidence that Saddam's regime had in fact targeted Bush as it had threatened to do during the 1991 Gulf War. In a radio broadcast shortly after the war, Saddam had threatened to hunt down and punish Bush. (Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who also was threatened publicly, was given enhanced security protection after the failed attempt on Bush's life.)
Despite the fact that U.S. counterterrorism
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