Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...savvy Gates, who hatches the daring scheme, reassures his young compatriots that they will not encounter conflict. Saddam's forces, he explains, are too busy thwarting the insurgent rebellion among the Iraqis to bother with the minor looting of a few Americans...
...their way to the buried treasure, the magisterial Gates tells his fellow mercenaries that the most important thing in life is necessity. By calculating what the most necessary thing is to each side in a conflict, one can predict an enemy's actions. While Saddam's troops are fighting rebels among their own people, he reasons, they are not going to bother about a small band of Americans pillaging. For the Iraqis, survival is the necessity; for Saddam his survival as a dictator and tyrant, and for the Iraqi people, simply their lives. For the American soldiers, necessity is riches...
...fear or hostility, and surround them with pleas for food, medicine and help. This reception is not what they expect, and this scene of the movie, shot with grainy, color-saturated ektachrome film, presents their situation as almost surreal. The walls are painted with vast smiling portraits of Saddam Hussein, hugged by loving children, wearing a tasseled hat and waving a diploma, looking benevolently down the narrow passageways of the bunkers...
...Saddam's soldiers help the Americans load the ingots of gold (stored in the heart of a vast underground labyrinth of cuisinarts and television sets, the spoils of war, in Louis Vuitton bags) into their truck. What is the price of this uncalled for assistance? Merely that the Americans avert their eyes to scenes of torture and murder of civilian men, women, and children...
...that left Nawaz to face the music back home. While calls for his ouster are mounting, Washington wants Pakistan?s constitution respected. And experience has made U.S. diplomats more inclined to spell out their positions ?- after all, it was in the belief that Washington would remain neutral that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and started the Gulf...