Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...accept U.S. leadership, might stand aloof from the coalition's integrated command structure, much as France does in NATO, perhaps even disdaining to fight. During the countdown to hostilities, President Francois Mitterrand had courted British and American anger by launching an eleventh- hour peace proposal that would have handed Saddam Hussein a diplomatic victory by rewarding an Iraqi withdrawal with the convening of a Middle East peace conference...
...Mitterrand's fine-tuned political instincts told him that in the face of battle, talk of French independence -- "la difference francaise" -- could not be maintained without loss of credibility at home and abroad. Once Saddam had rejected France's last-minute peace bid, Mitterrand put everything behind securing an allied victory, telling aides, "We are face-to- face with history." He forced the resignation of his anti-American Defense Minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a co-founder of the Franco-Iraqi Friendship Association who had tried to limit any military action by France strictly to Kuwaiti territory. French forces...
...Socialist Party. But as a member of the so-called Munich generation, which witnessed the West's failure in 1938 to nip Hitler's deadly ambitions in the bud, Mitterrand stood firmly against appeasement. Elysee Palace aides noticed a deep anger taking hold of him as he watched Saddam's cynical maneuvering, his wanton destruction and his contempt for human life...
Frequent telephone contact with President Bush brought the two leaders closer and helped reinforce their resolve. Differences emerged mainly in the kind of language they used. A master of innuendo, Mitterrand never called, as did Bush, for Saddam's "overthrow," but described the Iraqi's "political, moral and military authority" as "seriously weakened"; privately, Mitterrand is known to believe Saddam has little chance to survive as head of state. Nor did Mitterrand reject Mikhail Gorbachev's belated peace plan outright: Foreign Minister Roland Dumas called it a step in the right direction -- and then sliced it to shreds with diplomatic...
Even at the edge of the abyss, U.S. policy toward Iraq ran headlong into contradiction with itself. On July 25, 1990, as Iraqi tanks and troops were massing along the border of Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad that the U.S. had little to say about Arab border disputes and was eager to improve relations with Iraq. That same day in Washington, anxious State Department officials urged the Pentagon to dispatch the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence and its battle group, then in the Indian Ocean, to the mouth of the Persian Gulf -- as a signal...