Word: iraq
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...alliance together. In fact, the best policy, most analysts in Washington agree, is to do exactly what the U.S. has been doing all along: wait Saddam out and wear him down. Saddam, they note, is much weaker than he was five or 10 years ago. He remains powerful in Iraq because he has crushed his opposition, but on an absolute scale, his power is shrinking, his military is smaller, his money...
CAPTION: Is President Clinton doing a good job or a bad job handling the situation with Iraq...
...wouldn't have the sanctions today." Finding Saddam wouldn't have been easy, says Norman Schwarzkopf, recalling that Panama's Manuel Noriega defied a manhunt for quite some time. "If we'd gone to Baghdad," says former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, "we'd probably still be in Iraq, responsible for the people and politics, owning the place like we now own Haiti...
...successor to Saddam would be less hostile to U.S. interests. "Saddamism without Saddam is a real possibility," says Richard Haass, who was Bush's top Middle East expert. "A new Iraqi dictator would undoubtedly be free of the sanctions crippling Baghdad today. Even those not eager to deal with Iraq would want to give the new guy a chance. Then, if he turned out like Saddam, he'd use the money he'd get when the oil flowed again to rebuild Iraq's forces, and sooner or later he'd strike out too. You might be able to modulate...
Above all, there is Iran, the region's other unstable element. When the Gulf War's outcome was certain in 1991, every state in the area feared Iraq's fragmentation. Turkey, a NATO ally, was worried that Iraq's Kurds would form an independent nation and incite Turkey's own 10 million Kurds to rebellion. But the larger fear was an extension of Tehran's influence via the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist state carved from southern Iraq. That entity, bordering Kuwait, would threaten all the gulf emirates and the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Which...