Word: raiding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...show Saddam Hussein one last time that he was not to be trifled with. Saddam, fully relishing the irony that his own reign would outlast that of his chief nemesis, could not resist tweaking Bush. This time Bush had no patience for the game and ordered a bombing raid that -- at least briefly -- forced Saddam to retreat...
Beyond the personal animosity, though, Iraq and the U.S. are engaged in a crucial showdown over international order. Even as Iraqis mopped up after an allied bombing raid, Washington and Baghdad exchanged fresh threats about whether Iraq was or was not complying with U.N. requirements. Instead of retreating Iraq challenged U.S. planes over the weekend in the northern no-fly zone. After the U.S. shot down a threatening MiG-29 Washington hinted at stronger retaliation. Coming just days before Bush was to vacate the Oval Office, it was impossible to ignore the raw personal edge that drove both leaders' actions...
...allied air strike was intended to send Saddam a political admonition to reform his behavior, rather than deliver a crippling military blow. The modest raid by 110 U.S., British and French warplanes on four missile sites and four command posts in southern Iraq was, as one U.S. official noted, "a spanking, not a beating" -- and an inefficient one at that. The attack destroyed only one of the missile batteries the U.S. claimed were threatening allied aircraft in the skies over Iraq, although officials insisted that all but one of the eight targets were at least temporarily put out of action...
...President-elect did not need the reminder. Dipping his toe into the Iraqi morass the day of the raid, he stumbled. In an interview with the New York Times, he called the raid "the right thing to do," then seemed to open a small window for Saddam: "If you want a different relationship with me, you could begin by upholding the U.N. requirements to change your behavior. I'm not obsessed with the man." The softer rhetoric set off speculation that he might ease U.S. policy toward Baghdad. Clinton angrily denounced what he called a misinterpretation, and the tenor...
What Bush probably wanted most was what he has failed to achieve all along: to provoke the Iraqi people into taking matters into their own hands. This raid alone had little chance of accomplishing that. But "if Saddam goes on playing the same game, he can expect the same response," says a British diplomat. "We hope some of those around him will see that the only sensible alternative...