In my paper, “A King Slowly Murdered” I discuss how betrayal by certain persons and especially the betrayal by the first U.S. Bush Administration contributed to the premature death of King Hussein. In a way, it is less conceivable that lies which cause severe physiological trauma can be blamed for the death of a King who had lived to the rather ripe age of 82. Nevertheless, I am convinced that if all the evidence were out in the open, lies and deception used by the first Bush Administration directly led to a preventable Gulf War which led to American troops in Saudi Arabia which then led to a chronic condition of unrelenting stress for King Fahd which was the major cause of his debilitating stroke. This stroke then led to his death. I do believe that those who knew the late King the best and who loved him the most will agree that there is merit to my reasoning.

It is a well known fact that King Fahd had a warm brotherly affection for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, until Saddam’s forces suddenly invaded their brother Islamic Nation, Kuwait. Up to that critical point, the Saudi King greatly respected Iraq’s President as a Muslim brother and even warmly referred to him as “The Sword of Islam.”

King Fahd was especially appreciative of the money, effort and blood that Iraq had expended against the common enemy of both Saudi Arabia and Iraq which was Iran. Therefore, the Saudi King sensed a deep personal betrayal when President Hussein’s Iraq invaded their brother Sunni nation of Kuwait. To make matters even worse King Fahd was told by the U.S. that Iraqi forces were on the border of Saudi Arabia ready to invade the Saudi Kingdom. However satellite photos revealed that this U.S. claim was absolutely false. Nevertheless, though King Fahd probably later learned that the American’s claim was false, he was absolutely overwhelmed with anguish that his brother Muslim would so blatantly and even personally betray him by suddenly invading Kuwait. Undoubtedly the King was told conspiracy theories that the U.S. with the complicity of Israel had somehow manipulated the invasion in order to provide the pretense for a U.S. war against Iraq that would make Iraq less of a regional threat to the U.S. ally Israel. However, as the King, he not only had a serious responsibility to protect the people of his own Kingdom but also a responsibility to help liberate his Muslim brothers in Kuwait, so he could not afford to allow himself to be influenced by unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Therefore he chose to believe what his trusted oil purchasing friends in the first Bush Administration were telling him. They falsely insisted that Saddam Husseins shocking invasion of it’s neighbor Kuwait was a total surprise to them and promised him that the U.S. would do everything humanly possible to persuade Iraq to peacefully withdraw. When the U.S. reported back to Saudi Arabia that Saddam Hussein had been totally unresponsive to quite fair terms of withdrawal, King Fahd made a courageous decision based on the false and deceptive information he had been given by trusted U.S. officials. So, at great personal cost and in the face of strong resistance and severe criticism, he allowed the U.S. to receive what they had requested from Saudi Arabia. He graciously allowed them to build a military infrastructure on the Holy soil of Saudi Arabia and to station tens of thousands of American troops there. Consequently, both the overwhelming stress of the perceived betrayal by his trusted brother, Saddam Hussein, coupled with the draining stress of being forced by manipulated circumstances to invite gigantic numbers of non-Muslim American military forces on to the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia took a lethal toll on his personal health. Of course the unending stress of his decision to station the American troops on Saudi soil was greatly exacerbated by the objections and stinging criticisms that came from so many in the Kingdom who resisted and second guessed his most controversial decision. So the three great stresses of the betrayal, and the presence of American troops and the severe criticism drained much vital life from this dedicated man. Certainly some doctors would disagree; but many would confirm that these three negative factors were decisive contributors to his sudden, debilitating stroke which severely incapacitated him for nine years and finally led to his death.

This next point, though controversial, deserves consideration. Had King Fahd been more fully aware of the extent of the deception and intrigue that the first Bush Administration used to entice, trick, deceive and manipulate Saddam Hussein to decisively act on his own geopolitical considerations to invade Kuwait, how much would that awareness have relieved King Fahd’s deep feeling that he had been personally betrayed by Saddam Hussein? For instance, if King Fahd had realized that it was more a case of he himself being exploited, deceived, manipulated and even betrayed by the Bush administration more than he was being betrayed by his friend Saddam, would he have relented to the tremendous pressure from the Americans to allow all the U.S. troops to be stationed on Saudi soil? Also, even after Saddam had invaded Kuwait, if the King had been aware that the U.S. negotiations with Saddam to persuade him to withdraw were done more with the explicit objective to humiliate him into staying in Kuwait, rather than truly tying to persuade him to withdraw, how would that have affected the King and his advisors’ cooperation with the Americans who were falsely portraying themselves as the saviors of both the people of Saudi Arabia and the people of Kuwait? Furthermore, if the King had been more aware of how the U.S. had deliberately sabotaged King Hussein of Jordan’s almost successful attempt to persuade Iraq’s President to withdraw his military from Kuwait, that would most probably have prevented the bloody and devastating Gulf War, how would that relevant knowledge have affected the King’s cooperation with the U.S. decision makers? Would not that knowledge almost certainly have dissuaded him from the widely unpopular decision of agreeing to open the doors of the Saudi Kingdom to the waiting multitude of American military forces? Additionally, there is also the strong probability that had King Fahd been fully aware that the one whom he affectionately referred to as the “Sword of Islam” had indeed not betrayed him, at least not nearly to the extreme degree that the Americans had deceptively convinced him that he had, that this significant fact also would have prevented the King from opening the doors of the Kingdom to the Americans to the extent that he did.

Yes, if King Fahd had become more aware of each of these covert, behind the scenes manipulations of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by the deceitful U.S. Bush Administration, it could have indeed altered the way that Saudi Arabia so fully supported the U.S. strategic and tactical military needs in the first Gulf War. On a human level, such knowledge quite probably would have led to different decisions by the King which would have lessened his stress, prevented his stroke and prolonged his life. Admittedly, this is conjecture on my part, but it is not wild conjecture. It is conjecture based on the firm foundation of quite tangible, cruel deception which had explicit consequences. Of course hindsight at this point cannot alter past history. Nevertheless, in view of how a well meaning King and his Kingdom was deceived, exploited and manipulated, these regretful circumstances should at the least be treated as a learning situation, and be brought out into the light of public opinion, rather being buried in the sand of history. Also, it would seem that the Kingdom’s present leaders should be exceptionally wary of being deceived, exploited and manipulated a second time by quite effective smooth talking U.S. professional con-artists, in the current Bush Administration.

I do not intend to portray this last consideration as a major factor. Nevertheless, since it involved the Almighty ALLAH, it is both significant and relevant and deserves to be mentioned. In 1976 I was employed in Riyadh Saudi Arabia as an Orientation Coordinator, for the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh. Then, after a brief period as a counselor with the Riyadh International School, I was employed for nearly two years in a combination of Riyadh, Jeddah and Taif for a company known as Saudi Arabian Food Establishment also known as “SAFE.” Our company had a contract with Nestle of Switzerland to provide nourishing lunches for the school children of the Kingdom. During my off hours in the three cites in which our family lived, I tried to spend at least an hour each day walking around isolated areas near the city praying to ALLAH. In addition to the needs of my family who were now located in Seattle Washington, Wheaton Illinois and Rome Italy, as well as in Saudi Arabia, the other focus of my prayer was for the long term welfare of the Saudi people. My lovely wife and I were indeed grateful for how the Kingdom had supplied employment for me when the Civil War in Lebanon had uprooted our family of seven from my counseling position at Beirut’s American Community School. As I felt compelled to pray for the Kingdom’s people, my prayers especially focused on the Saudi people having a more complete understanding of the significance of ALLAH’s Risen Messiah as portrayed in both the Holy Quran and in the Injeel (New Testament).

Perhaps it was a direct result of my having consistently prayed for the welfare of Saudi Arabia while being a guest in their Kingdom that influenced ALLAH to trust me with a small bit of significant information. Yet these nine words directly from ALLAH, even though they were shared with me almost fifteen years ago, even now have great relevance to Saudi Arabia’s future welfare. These few revealing words shared with one quite insignificant person from Seattle Washington have direct relevance to a future trust relationship between the leaders of the Kingdom and U.S. leaders which was at one time based at least partially on deception.

So this is my unusual and brief encounter with ALLAH which occurred in early September of 1990 as I was walking along 20^th N.E. in Seattle’s University District approximately twelve years after returning to the U.S. from the Saudi Kingdom. This occurred only days after Iraq had invaded Kuwait. I had been walking along the quiet street silently pleading with ALLAH that He would not allow the U.S. military to begin bombing Iraqi forces in Kuwait, but that he would help Arab and U.S. diplomacy to solve the problem. After about one hour of pleading, I became somewhat emotionally exhausted with praying about something so negative as bombing human beings in order to kill them, especially since diplomacy had not yet had an opportunity to solve the crisis. Since I had become so emotionally drained I respectfully told ALLAH that I was too tired to pray any more and that I would pray again the following day.

Then I consciously asked myself what I could think about in order to get my mind off the potential bombing and killing that I was afraid might happen any minute. Suddenly I decided what I would do to divert my mind from thinking about death and destruction. Since my wife and I had recently been to the first game of the new season for the nearby University of Washington football team, I made a distinct choice to think about the strengths of the new team. I began thinking about the new team leader, the quarter back, Mark Brunnel and whether he had the skills to take the team to the championship game, the Rose Bowl. No sooner than I had begun concentrating on that subject, a new thought that I had never before considered, was abruptly spoken to my mind that had nothing to do with football. A short and precise statement was silently stated to me in the form of a fact or conclusion. The words were: “The American Administration wanted Iraq to invade Kuwait!” There is a chance that the words were “planned for” instead of “wanted,” but of the other words I am absolutely certain.

I was instantly shocked at two things. That a thought like that could be spoken in my mind while I was concentrating on something I was so interested in; “Husky football.” And the other thing was the absolute certainty or dogmatism of the statement. It was as if the speaker had absolute, certain knowledge about the subject and spoke to me in such a way that he had the authority and the certain background information that meant that I could trust His statement because He really had His facts straight.

I was so startled at what had occurred in my mind that I immediately stopped walking. Then I nervously released some of my emotion by laughing out loud. Though I knew the voice had been spoken in my mind and did not enter my mind through hearing something through my ears, I still looked around me and asked out loud, “Where did that come from?”

Then, without praying or thinking about football anymore, I walked directly to my home, thinking about what to me were the shocking implications of the dogmatic statement that had been emphatically spoken in my mind. Up to that point, though I had really come to distrust a former President, Richard Nixon, there was not a doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was the only “bad guy” in connection to his invading Kuwait and precipitating a potential war. Furthermore, up to that point I had total confidence that my own government including President Bush, was doing everything it could possibly do so that there would not need to be any more people killed in connection with Iraq’s surprising invasion of its neighbor Kuwait. I totally assumed at that point that my government valued both Kuwaiti life and Iraqi life as much as it valued American life. But now, here was GOD/ALLAH, who for His own reasons was wanting me to be absolutely certain that these naive notions of mine were wrong and that American Government deception was an integral part of the mix. I had become virtually immediately convinced that GOD/ALLAH had been the source of the statement. For it was GOD to whom I had been praying before I switched to thinking about football. Also, it could only have been God Who had all the background information to make such a dogmatic statement; a statement that was totally in conflict to anything I had either thought of or had heard from any one else up to that point in time.

As I was pondering what had occurred and why GOD wanted insignificant Tom Griffith to be so certain of this new perspective regarding the untrustworthiness of American leadership, I hurriedly walked the few blocks to my home. When I arrived I immediately turned on our T.V. Significantly, at that very moment, Hossni Mulbarak, the President of Egypt was being interviewed regarding Iraq’s recent invasion of Kuwait. If I remember correctly the question of the interviewer went something like this:

“President Mulbarak, when you and other Arab leaders knew that Saddam Hussein’s troops had surrounded Kuwait and were ready to go in, why didn’t you Arab leaders try to talk him out of it and warn him not to continue in to Kuwait or that you and other Arab leaders would take immediate action against him.”

I recall that Mulbarak’s reply to such a question went something like this:

“I did talk with Saddam Hussein about withdrawing immediately and he said that he only wanted to scare Kuwait and promised that he would soon withdraw.”

Then he added something like, “Because he was a brother Muslim, I believed him.” Then, as I recall it, he got sort of a pathetic, hurt and surprised look on his face and added these five words.

“But he lied to me.”

I distinctly remember thinking to myself as President Mulbarak described his encounter with Saddam Hussein,

For being a leader of a large nation who was also a former military leader, I had trouble believing his statement that he so easily believed Saddam Hussein and totally trusted him to keep his word. And the more I thought about his superficial response the more I came to the conclusion that he was lying about believing Saddam when he said he would withdraw. I remember thinking that if he did not know that the American Administration wanted Iraq to invade Kuwait as the voice had told me that the Americans did, at the very least, he also wanted Iraq to invade Kuwait.

Two major personal outcomes occurred in my own mind as a result of the voice speaking to me. I was relatively quickly changed from a naive person who could not conceive of my government actually wanting lives of Kuwaitis, Iraqis and Americans to be lost through an invasion and a resulting war of liberation, to a person who began to examine the deeper geopolitical and economic motives of my government in order to understand why they would think that the Eternal ALLAH would not hold them accountable for manipulating thousands of innocent deaths. It was also very difficult for me to accept the fact that U.S. elected leaders were actually allowing valuable humans to be killed in a war that could be avoided by using skillful, sincere, honest diplomacy. Then I more slowly began to realize that my own national government that for so long I had unquestioningly trusted, would for what it considered to be our nation’s long range geopolitical interests, lie as often as it needed to lie to whomever it would choose to lie.