Telling someone that you're not allied with someone else is not the same as giving them a "green light" to invade them."
But telling an ally (Saddam) that US has "no opinion" when that ally inquires how US will react to Iraq invading Kuwait is most definitely and was most definitely a green light by any standard.
‘We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ per US Iraq ambassador April Glaspie. The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’
Bush I, Baker and Cheney, who were all active supporters of Saddam as a means of waging proxy war on Iran, can at best be called incompetent in making such a response but considering how events turned out it seems clear they fully meant to do what they did, give Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait and to then use that as a pretext to use the military force they had been building as members of the Reagan admin for the previous eight years.
US dependence on oil was at the heart of that scheming and resultant 30 years war for oil, the $17T in oil war debt, the $600B per year maintaining the US military occupation of the Middle East....all to secure oil for cars and trucks.
Which brings us back to a paltry $1.5B to subsidize Tesla EVs to end that dependence. The zero emissions, zero oil tax credit should be expanded to match the problem. Dedicating one year of oil war cost, $600B, to EV's to end paying $600B year after to year for oil is a good investment.