Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have been an Iraqi judgment at the meeting itself that made war inescapable. Throughout the talks Saddam's half-brother Barzan Tikriti had sat on Aziz's right, closely scrutinizing the American team. Soon after the session ended, Barzan called Baghdad. The Americans don't want to fight, he told Saddam. They want to talk their way out. They are weak...
...allied air campaign began, a massive troop movement was secretly set in motion that would seal Saddam's fate. Fearing that a frontal assault on heavily dug-in Iraqi defenders could lead to thousands of allied casualties, Schwarzkopf launched the flanking maneuver he would later compare to the Hail Mary play -- the football maneuver in which a quarterback praying for a last-minute touchdown sends his receivers far off to one side and then deep into the end zone...
Schwarzkopf reasoned that if his subordinates doubted it could be done, Saddam's generals would be quite certain that such a move was impossible and, lacking any aerial reconnaissance to indicate it was actually under way, would leave "this big, open flank" largely undefended. He was right...
...miles south of the Saudi border with Kuwait, the town had been abandoned two weeks earlier by residents who fled out of the range of Iraqi artillery fire. On Tuesday, Jan. 29, nine brigades of Iraq's 5th Mechanized Division -- regarded by the U.S. as one of Saddam's better units -- swept into Saudi Arabia. They entered along a stretch of border that began north of Khafji and ended at the town of Umm Hujul, 50 miles to the west. By the next night they had occupied the town. Supported by U.S. air and artillery attacks, troops from Saudi Arabia...
...Saddam had intended the raid to lure allied forces into a ground war before they were ready, he failed. Not only did troops from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.S. repel the invaders, but Saddam's ploy actually contributed to the success of the allied ground offensive. The battle provided U.S. military planners with their first opportunity to see how Iraq's troops operated against American mobile tactics. The Iraqis performed badly, surrendering en masse when the Marines counterattacked. "They showed us they couldn't handle combined operations," says a senior Pentagon official. "They maneuvered but couldn't work effectively...