Word: annan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After all, during the last such crisis, in February, Madeleine Albright gave her blessing to Annan to go to Baghdad and work out a phony deal that effectively disarmed the weapons inspectors in return for a few months' respite between crises...
...First, Annan sent a letter that offered Saddam not just an out but a win: a nice reward--broad hints of accelerating the move to lift the economic embargo of Iraq--if Saddam would just act nice. Saddam responded with his "Swiss cheese" letter, a disingenuous, heavily hedged show of compliance with U.N. demands that was, in fact, a prescription for more Iraqi "cheat and retreat" on weapons inspections. Nonetheless, the very transmittal of that letter, as yet unparsed, was enough to prompt President Clinton to recall his bombers in midflight...
Then, while the U.S. remained "poised to strike" if the holes in the cheese were not filled, Annan fatally undermined the U.S. position when his personal representative in Baghdad pronounced the letter unconditional Iraqi acceptance of U.N. terms...
Then, to make U.S. action all the more impossible, a third bit of mischief: as soon as Annan received Saddam's letter, he announced that he would be returning U.N. humanitarian workers to Baghdad within a day. Doing so would effectively end the American threat, however "poised" for action the Administration claimed to be. It is one thing to bomb an enemy capital. It is another to bomb an enemy capital where U.N. humanitarian workers are flitting about doing their good works...
...Annan to know that while February's Clinton--weakened by the Lewinsky scandal, mocked for Wagging the Dog--was desperate for a way out, November's Clinton--vindicated by the elections, triumphant in the fall of Newt, fresh from diplomatic success at Wye Plantation--was this time finally prepared to use force...