Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...four years Saddam Hussein has tried to hide his program to build weapons of mass destruction from the U.N. As long as Iraq is suspected of violating the U.N. weapons proscriptions, it will suffer from a crushing economic embargo, so every tactic is worth a try. When lies haven't worked, Saddam has revealed information, but only those facts that he knew U.N. inspectors would eventually discover on their own. Pentagon officials have come to call the ploy "cheat and retreat." Last week, in a major retreat, Baghdad confessed that it could have made the 1991 Persian Gulf...
There was more. One Iraqi report stated that shortly before invading Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam ordered a crash program to have a nuclear weapon built by April 1991. American bombing halted the program in January 1991--only three months before Saddam's deadline...
...possible reason Saddam never used his biological weapons is that Washington sent him veiled threats indicating the U.S. and Israel would retaliate with nuclear arms if he did. Deploying the weapons effectively would in any case have been difficult. Still, Administration experts say they were capable of causing thousands of casualties. "It would have been awful," says Matthew Meselson, a germ-warfare expert at Harvard University. For example, botulinum toxin kills by interfering with the nervous system and ultimately paralyzing the respiratory muscles. The Pentagon estimated that just one Scud missile warhead filled with the toxin could contaminate...
Combined with a severe U.S.-led trade embargo, the disappearance of the capable has left a country where nothing much works anymore, a land whose economy, as well as its army, is badly mismanaged. Consequently, while he can still engage in terrorism, Saddam no longer inspires fear in his neighbors. King Hussein of Jordan supported Iraq during the Gulf War, and Jordan has been Iraq's only outlet to the outside world during the years of the embargo. Now King Hussein shelters the defectors and hints that Saddam should be overthrown...
Heeding warnings from two high-level Iraqi defectors that Saddam Hussein has recently considered attacking Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. sent ships carrying supplies and equipment to the Persian Gulf and ordered 1,400 troops to Kuwait for military maneuvers. Pentagon officials expressed concern about elite Iraqi forces conducting "unusual training activities" around Baghdad...