Word: baathist
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...June 7, 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, called Osirak, which had been sold to the Baathist government by France in November 1975. The air strike, known as “Operation Babylon,” was carried out to prevent Hussein’s engineers from constructing a nuclear weapon that could have been used against Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stressed that a pre-emptive disabling of the Osirak reactor was wholly justified as a means of national self-defense...
...then what? Advocates suggest there is a palatable alternative to Saddam just waiting to step in. In fact, all efforts to organize an effective Iraqi opposition have failed. There is a good chance Saddam would be replaced by Saddam II, another Baathist general ready to continue the military dictatorship. More likely still, a headless Iraq would go the way of Lebanon, fractured among Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the center egged on by meddling neighbor states pursuing oil and ethnic interests...
Saddam is still in power, of course, and there has been much debate about Bush's decision not to send his tanks to Baghdad and topple the Baathist leader. But the President insists that the chastened and defanged Iraqi dictator is no worldly threat today. "The Republican Guard units, some of them, have been dismantled," he says. "Most of them are 50% strength. And it's a different army. They aren't capable ((of projecting)) aggression the way they did before...
True, Bush would have preferred and called many times for another Baathist to put a bullet through Saddam's head. His first choice was Saddamism without Saddam. But his second choice was Saddamism with Saddam...
...self-deception is not total, though. Saddam knew enough to confine his recent forays to the Baathist heartland, the mainstay of his support. It will be a long time, disenchanted Iraqis in Baghdad note, before the President will try to rally followers in the southern cities so recently devastated by his army...