Word: kingdoms
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...days later Saddam held an impromptu news conference in Baghdad with journalists accompanying Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who secured the release of 80 Austrian hostages. The foreign nationals he was holding, Saddam said, are "to prevent attacks from happening." Saddam vowed to remain in Kuwait and derided the kingdom's former rulers for "sitting around gambling tables wasting millions." U.S. and Western intervention in the gulf was "naked aggression," Saddam charged, warning, "Whoever collides with Iraq will find columns of dead bodies, which may have a beginning...
Rallying the Arab world to the American cause has been trickiest. Saudi Arabia feared that the U.S. might tire of its mission and pull out, leaving the oil-rich kingdom at Saddam's mercy. But the resolve Bush projected was perceived as firm, in part because he waived the Metzenbaum amendment -- a restriction on the sale of U.S. jets to the Saudis. Coupled with the satellite intelligence showing that Saddam's forces were positioned to strike the Saudis, that action turned King Fahd into a believer, and U.S. troops were promptly invited to defend Saudi Arabia...
Recent events have made it more difficult than ever to achieve Arab unity. There is little room left for the political fence straddling that has maintained a strained peace. The leaders who side with Saddam risk being accused of handing him the keys to the Arab kingdom and losing Western economic and military support. Those who stand against Saddam could be stripped of their nationalist credentials back home, as traitors to the Arab cause -- or fall under Saddam's tanks as Kuwait did. The anguish of these leaders was evident as they groped to balance long-term strategic interests against...
Hussein's relations with Iraq have warmed over the past decade, mainly as a shield against rising fundamentalism and Israel's designs to turn his kingdom into a Palestinian state. He has had to acknowledge the pan-Arabist, anti-U.S. passions of his citizens -- at least half of whom are Palestinian -- which have only increased as the peace process has stalled. Hussein refused to join the Arab League's original condemnation of Iraq, calling the move premature. "I believe ((Saddam)) is a person to be trusted and dealt with," he declared...
...sweeping economic sanctions, but almost all troops landing in the desert to bolster the tiny Saudi army were American. The situation remained dangerously unstable. President Bush vowed not only to defend the Persian Gulf but also to force Saddam to disgorge Kuwait. Saddam formally annexed the Emir's kingdom, dropped all pretenses of a military pullout and called for a holy war to "burn the land under the feet of the aggressive invaders...