Word: arabized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Arab leaders were not alone in suggesting that Saddam could be lured into behaving with more restraint. In the spring of 1984, Teicher accompanied Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan's special Middle East envoy, on a visit to Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told Rumsfeld that Israel considered Iran, not Iraq, to be the greatest threat in the region. According to Teicher, Shamir proposed the construction of an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Israeli port of Haifa as a goodwill gesture. When the U.S. relayed the offer to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, he refused to pass it along...
...billion made it likely that Baghdad would concentrate on rebuilding its crippled economy and increasing its oil production rather than embark on foreign adventures. Moreover, the assessment held, Iraq would feel beholden to those countries that had helped finance its fight against Iran, among them Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. There was one cautionary note, sounded almost in passing: Saddam was spending millions of dollars to build up chemical- and biological-weapons capacity...
Saddam can be accused of many things, but masking his intentions is not one of them. In May 1990 he told a gathering of Arab leaders in Baghdad that he considered oil production above the limits set for each producer nation by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to be an act of war. Kuwait was exceeding its OPEC limits at the time. But a senior State Department official dismissed the statement as "typical exaggerated rhetoric." Says the same official today: "I guess there is a lesson here: Take a tyrant at his word...
...sending Saddam, no wonder he misread Washington's intentions. On July 25, a week before the invasion, Glaspie was summoned to a hasty meeting with Saddam even as his troops threatened the border with Kuwait. She told him, "We don't have much to say about Arab-Arab differences, like your border difference with Kuwait." After the invasion Glaspie was severely criticized for her remarks, which were seen by many foreign policy analysts as having given Saddam a virtual green light for invasion. The criticism was misplaced. "She was an ambassador operating on the basis of instructions," says Representative...
...dominate the region. For the allies, the issues of putting Saddam on trial for war crimes and of Iraqi payment of reparations to Kuwait still need to be settled. Although he remains a hero to many of his followers, Saddam has probably ceased playing an effective role in Arab politics. Even such supporters as Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization are distancing themselves from Saddam in defeat...