Word: iraqis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...public about the Cuban missile crisis. During the gulf war, the White House rarely had six hours to respond and sometimes felt it did not have six minutes. In the face of this urgent need to know, whenever CIA Director William Webster received word via intelligence satellite that an Iraqi Scud missile had been launched, he would tell National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, "Turn on CNN to see where it lands...
...FINAL EFFORT AT A PEACEful settlement of the gulf war epitomized the transition from the old diplomacy to the new. Secretary of State Baker met for six hours with Iraqi Foreign Minister Aziz but could not persuade him to accept a manila envelope containing a private letter from Bush to Saddam Hussein. As the meeting ended, both sides readied press conferences blaming each other. Aziz let it be known he would wait for Bush to appear, thus having the last word. White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater quickly telephoned CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer. Tell your bosses in Atlanta and your...
...problem with Saddam was not his military might -- the President never doubted that the U.S. had the power to prevail in combat -- but the possibility that the Iraqi leader might withdraw from Kuwait at the last minute, keeping his menacing army and maniacal intentions intact. "I mean, this was worrying me," says Bush. "What happens if he does just haul all this armor back along the border, unpunished, unrepentant, faced down by what he knows is a superior army...
Bush wanted to make every effort at a peaceful solution but was determined to line up enough force to win a war if it came to that. He focused his argument on the Iraqi strongman: "I tried to make very clear from the beginning that it was not a battle with the people, but with this dictator." As the Jan. 15 deadline approached, Bush concluded that Saddam had badly misjudged the situation. "Somewhere along the line," the President recalls, "I realized that he felt we were bluffing, and that he also felt another thing where he was just as wrong...
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...