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- WORLD, Page 44World NotesDIPLOMACYAmbassador in The Doghouse
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- When she appeared before House and Senate panels last March,
- the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, persuaded their
- members that she had talked tough to Saddam Hussein in the days
- before he invaded Kuwait. "I hope my credibility is at least as
- great as Saddam Hussein's," she told the Senators then.
- Contradicting the Iraqi leader's derisive account, she insisted
- that she had firmly warned him that the U.S. would not tolerate
- the use of force against Kuwait.
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- Not so, say Senators who have now seen the cables she sent
- back to the State Department in those critical days. Instead of
- a spirited defense of U.S. interests, Senators found waffling
- and appeasement. "No place does [Glaspie] report clearly
- delivering the kind of warning she described in her testimony
- to the committee," said Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell of
- Rhode Island. California Democratic Senator Alan Cranston
- charged that she "deliberately misled Congress about her role."
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