Word: saddamism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...which, strangely enough, dovetails with Saddam's thinking. The allies are attempting to minimize casualties; Saddam will try to make the war supremely bloody. To exactly that end, however, he will try to drag out the fighting as long as possible. Right now he is "hunkering down" -- in the words of General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- putting up only minimal resistance to the air campaign and saving all possible resources to fight what the Iraqi leader keeps calling "the mother of all battles" on the ground...
...Probably Saddam is banking on absorbing our air offensive and our ground ; offensive, but inflicting maximum casualties on U.S. forces," says General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the allied forces in the gulf. "Having done that, if the situation is promising, he would launch a counteroffensive. If not, having inflicted these casualties, he would rely on American public opinion to bring this whole thing to an end. And all this time he tries to portray himself as a hero to what he perceives as a supportive Arab world...
...Whatever Saddam is saving his planes for, they are not a factor in the battle now. Many may be unable to take off because runways they might use have been bombed full of craters. Powell displayed a map showing only five of 66 airfields at which the U.S. spotted any activity last week. When the Iraqi planes do fly, their performance in dogfighting is miserable. Last Friday two Iraqi jets tried to stage an attack with Exocet missiles on British ships in the Persian Gulf; a Saudi pilot shot down both. In any case, the U.S. and Britain claim...
Bombast aside, the speech gave a strong clue to his plans, which struck some American politicians as a military adaptation of Muhammad Ali's "rope-a- dope" ring strategy: bob, weave, dance and duck until the opponent tires himself out chasing an elusive target; then hit hard. Saddam, in fact, has supposedly used very nearly those words. Says an Arab diplomat in Amman: "Before the war, he was telling everyone, 'We know that the first strike will be for the benefit of the U.S. But we are prepared for them to hit us for two or three weeks. After that...
Though that seems clear enough, some mysteries remain. One is what Saddam intends to do with the air force he has taken such care to keep intact by keeping his planes hidden in bunkers. Some American analysts suspect he will never use his jets in combat but will save them to wield as a postwar political weapon. In this view, the dictator knows he is going to be driven out of Kuwait but expects to survive still holding power in Iraq. If he throws the planes into the battle for Kuwait, they will only be shot down. If he keeps...