Word: iraq
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...flight of Hussein Kamel al-Majid to Jordan last month, along with several relatives, revealed a shocking rift in Iraq's ruling clan. Hussein Kamel is Saddam Hussein's cousin and son-in-law. A true hard-liner, he oversaw Iraq's program to develop weapons of mass destruction and, as he indirectly admits below, was responsible for brutal repression of Shi'ites and Kurds after the Gulf War. In his first major interview with a Western journalist, Hussein Kamel talked to diplomatic correspondent Dean Fischer in Amman. On one matter he was almost certainly dissembling: though he denies...
TIME: Why did you decide to defect? Hussein Kamel: I was motivated by the interests of the country. I reached the point where I found [criticizing erroneous policies] to be futile. For the past 15 years Iraq has not stopped fighting. It has ended up accumulating debts that will require generations and generations to repay. There are too many executions in our society, too many arrests. Whatever the age of the critic--whether 80 or 15--many people are executed. For these reasons I left...
TIME: Can anybody in Iraq dissent from the regime's policies without fear of imprisonment, or torture or death...
...American intelligence officials believe the new documents may confirm their worst suspicions of the Iraqi weapons program. For example, before the Kuwait invasion, the CIA concluded in a secret report that Iraq could cobble together at least one crude nuclear device and detonate it in the western Iraqi desert in a demonstration explosion "to shake the teeth of Saddam's Arab neighbors," as a former senior agency official puts it. Before the latest revelations were made, U.N. officials believed that Baghdad had produced more than a ton of anthrax and botulinum toxin, a small portion of which they suspect...
...diplomats suggest that Iraq has only until the end of the year to push for sanctions relief. After that comes the U.S. presidential election season, during which they believe Clinton would never lift the embargo for fear of appearing soft. So the regime is promising "100%" cooperation with the U.N. , according to Ekeus. But the Iraqis have been playing cheat and retreat skillfully for years, and even if Hussein Kamel's defection makes it much harder, they will still no doubt find some ways to continue the game...