Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...effort. "There's no easy way either to directly oust him or to create an opposition group that over time can do it." In fact, say military analysts, the liberation law is a fine symbol to show that the U.S. stands with the people of Iraq against Saddam, but it is hardly a blueprint for his demise...
...militarily dubious, the new tack played well politically. It pacified congressional critics who have clamored for Saddam's removal, and papered over any perception left by the bombing U-turn that the dictator was getting off scot-free. But a sizable portion of the capital took Clinton's pledge as political snake oil, a shift designed to make a show of doing something rather than actually doing anything...
Taking out Saddam has long been a dream goal in Washington, but the Administration has come up short in figuring out how to reach it. Republicans grew fed up with Clinton's halfhearted, clandestine efforts, and key Democrats demanded direct talk about encouraging democratic change, while the White House and the CIA, spooked by past failures, stalled over new ideas. Around June, the White House finally delivered a top-secret covert-action memo to Congress, but it smelled like a rehash of tired, old schemes, and the Senate Intelligence Committee bounced it. Instead, it backed the $97 million Iraq Liberation...
Clinton signed the measure on Oct. 31, the day Saddam booted out U.N. inspectors, but aides say the President had no intention of passing one rifle to the hodgepodge of weak Iraqi opposition groups. (The measure leaves Clinton full discretion on whether and how to spend the money.) The Pentagon and the CIA still consider the legislation foolhardy in trying to arm an opposition "with no there there...
More than 70 anti-Saddam grouplets sit around plotting in coffee shops from London to Amman. They cover every shade of opinion and ethnic coloration, including Islamists with Shi'ite and Sunni subdivisions, Kurd separatists, Arab nationalists, communists and liberal democrats. Their only common goal is to depose Saddam, but after that come conflicting agendas. The most robust of the groups, at least in p.r. terms, is Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The I.N.C. once united nearly two-dozen factions and earned support from Washington, but it has fallen on hard times. Internal feuds and well-publicized failures have melted...