Saddam Hussein
As Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations rapidly grew worse, Saddam was getting different information about how the United States would respond to an invasion. The United States had been working on starting a good relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion worth of arms in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars of food and arms to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets.