Word: arabism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...submission is no sure thing either, because the Iraqi President, who builds palaces while his people starve, seems willing to let his country hunker down and absorb almost limitless punishment. Such an attack would involve bomber squadrons as well as missiles, endangering American lives. It would also convulse the Arab world, which fears a destabilized Iraq--"Beirut with ballistic missiles," as a Gulf Defense Minister describes it--as much as it fears Saddam. The region is already roiled by the U.S. failure to push Israel into meaningful peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Those looking for a symbol of the fractious...
...planes. Pentagon sources considered it likely; State Department officials weren't so sanguine. Heavy B-52 bombers will be based on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, a British territory on loan to the U.S., and B-1s will probably fly out of Bahrain, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates. Says Army General Hugh Shelton, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "We're confident that we have the capability to carry out whatever we are asked...
France and Russia contend that military action against Saddam could be self-defeating: if he refuses to budge, the Arab world could rise up against the spectacle of sustained bombing. "Surgical air strikes will not eliminate [U.S.] suspicions," says Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Sergei Lavrov, "and they will raise hell in the region. Blanket bombing will turn everyone in the Arab world against...
Privately, many Arab officials and dissident Iraqis urge assassination on their American contacts as the cleanest way to return Iraq to some kind of normality. But Executive Order 12333, issued by Ronald Reagan, says that "no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." The prohibition grew out of widespread disgust over disclosures of U.S. plots to kill Castro and a scheme to depose Chile's President Salvador Allende that helped lead to his death...
...Such telegenic stunts have replaced any serious attempts at diplomacy in Iraq's 20-day standoff with the United Nations. With most Arab countries ? even Kuwait ? expressing opposition to a U.S. air strike, Saddam is evidently maneuvering himself into the position of anti-American leadership he always sought. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is pushing the image for all it's worth: In Morocco Sunday, he warned of a backlash by "Arab masses" in the event of military action...