Word: kuwait
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Saddam achieved his mythic proportions largely by casting the 1991 war sparked by his occupation of Kuwait as an epic showdown with America and with Israel, which he dragged into the conflict by launching missiles at Tel Aviv. He still has followers, notably among Palestinians who love his implacable opposition to Israel and appreciate the cash he doles out to families of suicide bombers. But 13 years later, it's hard to ignore the fact that apart from the Scud attacks on Israel, Saddam's military campaigns have always targeted fellow Muslims--Iranians, Kuwaitis and even Iraqi Kurds...
...black-gold rushes in a generation comes with a few big catches. First, billions of dollars will be required to repair Iraqi oil installations hobbled by more than a decade of neglect. And that's assuming Saddam doesn't torch and otherwise sabotage the wells, as he did in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War. Tens of billions more will be needed to then develop Iraq's vast untapped oil fields...
...invasion began so that an Arab delegation would have a chance to direct the Iraqi generals to one last fire escape. A coup might seem unlikely, given Saddam's record of airtight personal security, but the hot breath of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division next door in Kuwait may have changed the climate in Iraq. "You'd be surprised how quickly Iraqi loyalties can change," says an Arab diplomat...
Iraq's southernmost city is just an hour's drive from Kuwait. If the U.S. goes to war with Iraq, American forces will almost surely secure Basra early on as they push north toward Baghdad. They will want a continuing presence in the area to keep potentially rebellious Iraqi Shi'ites, who are concentrated around Basra, under control. And if the stories about Saddam Hussein's scorched-earth strategy are true, then Basra, ringed as it is with oil fields, could turn into an environmental deathtrap. "We know we're heading for a disaster," says surgeon Akram Hamoodi, director...
...statues point east, but the next war would come to Basra from the south, the scene of Iraq's humiliation in 1991, when U.S.-led forces drove the Iraqi military from Kuwait. A sand barrier and trench constructed by Kuwait after the Gulf War to prevent infiltrators from crossing over now separates Iraq from Kuwait, and beyond it are the massing ranks of the invasion force. As he peers into the distance in the midday haze, vegetable farmer Shadat Dafeh Hamed mumbles, "I can't see them, but I know they are there." Hamed, 70, lives closer to the enemy...