Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...George Bush supporting Saddam Hussein? The question sounds insane, but a number of critics charge that he is, in effect, by not helping the rebels fighting to oust the archdemon. Bush, after all, denounced the Iraqi dictator as being in some respects "worse than Hitler," organized a multinational crusade to crush his military power and repeatedly called for his overthrow. For the past four weeks, Shi'ite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north have been trying to accomplish just that. Yet after Bush met with his top national security advisers last week, the President made it clear...
That decision, moreover, was made in full knowledge that Saddam is likely not just to defeat the insurrections but to massacre their supporters by the thousands. That is already happening in the south, where Saddam loyalists reportedly have regained control of nearly all the towns once captured by the Shi'ites and are taking a fearsome revenge. Refugees by the thousands have fled across the American lines, seeking succor and narrating tales of torture and mass executions...
...predicts a U.S. official, "it's going to get really ugly" for the Kurdish fighters who have taken much of northeastern Iraq. "Saddam's probably going to use helicopter gunships, fixed-wing bombers, chemical weapons, napalm -- the works." U.S. forces earlier had forbidden the Iraqi military to fly warplanes and had actually shot down two. Washington had further hinted that it might attack helicopters flying against the rebels and retaliate, presumably by bombing, if Saddam used chemical weapons or napalm against his own people. But by the end of last week those warnings were exposed as a bluff that...
...some columnists and Middle East experts, this policy seemed a disgraceful combination of cynicism and moral abdication. Several critics accused the President of reverting to his pre-August view of Saddam as a force for stability in the region, at least in the sense of being preferable to chaos. As to the moral argument, some in the Administration acknowledged discomfort. One official conceded, "It seems to me just like Hungary in 1956. Having called on people to overthrow their repressive leadership, we just sit back and watch them get slaughtered." Other commentators came up with a different analogy...
...country. "There are no real groups competing for power," says a U.S. analyst. "The Baathists have destroyed them all." . Bush's advisers fear that if some loose combination of rebels won, they would not be able to exercise effective control over the institutions dominated by Saddam's fellow Sunni Muslims -- the army, the security police and the Baath party -- that have kept Iraq together. The country could well splinter into rival fragments that might be gobbled up by neighboring Iran, Syria and Turkey, leading to instability throughout the Middle East. Or the rebels might provoke other multi-ethnic states...