State Department officials complained on the grounds that Iraq was not an enemy. The scenario was an Iraqi invasion of the Arabian peninsula. In late July, US Central Command featured Iraq-thinly disguised as “a country from the north”-in a command post wargame called Internal Look. The assessment did not change appreciably when Saddam, in a televised speech on July 17, threatened to take military action against Kuwait. Intelligence reports said that Iraq was “weary” from its long war in the 1980s with Iran and was not likely to attack its neighbors in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Despite the increasingly bellicose behavior of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency did not see Iraq as an urgent problem.

In the summer of 1990, Iraq was the best-armed state in the Arab world.