Word: kuwait
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From the day Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 until it was evicted nearly seven months later, Bush operated on the conceit that he was the leader not only of the U.S. but of the world. No one had elected him to the latter post, but almost no one except Saddam objected. Quite the contrary, the world was eager for someone to follow, and Bush obliged. For a long, proud moment, he conquered the vision thing. It was the high point of his presidency...
...HAVE HEARD, the sky in Kuwait City was incredibly dark with oily black smoke and my urban surroundings were pock-marked by explosions and littered with debris, including the remains of Iraqi tanks...
...quickly learned that this Kuwaiti man had spent a number of years in the United States and had earned a masters degree at MIT before returning to Kuwait. He and his family had spent the seven-month Iraqi occupation hiding in their apartment, eating whatever they could find. None of his family members had been killed by the Iraqis, but friends of his had not been so lucky...
...life? And set an estimated 650 oil-well fires that spewed untold tons of smoke into the air? Some of the direst predictions, including altered weather patterns across Asia, failed to materialize, and the well fires were put out in only eight months (actually faster than expected). But in Kuwait itself, the air remained acrid the whole time, and the oil that seeped into the sandy soil will stay there for years...
...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...