"$125 million is a good start, and I'm glad those efforrts are being made - I hope they do much more. Maybe if it had started in, say, 1985 or so... ? "
Hmm, if Kuwait had not loaned tens of billions of dollar to support Iraq's war with Iran, then that would have put a big dent in Saddam's money supply, of course it's possible Saddam would have simply sued for peace with Iran, then invaded Kuwait sooner, or Iran might have succssfully destablized Iraq. We were still in the Cold War in '85. We had just "gotten over" Iranians creating the Hostage Crisis, which basically resulted in Carter losing his election, and Reagan winning the Election.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ir/Iranhost.html
We STILL don't have offical relations with Iran, and of course Iran turned to our enemy- the Soviets.
Probably our biggest problem at the time with Iraq was the poor leadership of Saddam, who probably deluded himself into believing he was some great miltary leader, but of course he wasn't. He was hopelessly incompetent.