Word: saddamism
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...most of his life, Khadir honed the occupation he learned as a child: fighting in the Kurdish militia against Saddam Hussein's forces. He was jailed seven times since the age of 14 and saw a favorite uncle executed. Now, at 32, he is perfecting an entirely new skill that could change this region as much as have the wars in which he has fought: drilling for oil. Since late November, he has toiled about 9 m aboveground on the first derrick erected in Kurdistan in decades - by a Norwegian outfit using a Chinese rig, of all things. From...
...troops deployed to fight the Taliban, Rumsfeld, 70, is on the line as never before in a long and storied career. Afghanistan was a highly unconventional war that relied in part on CIA agents carrying bags of cash to buy the loyalty of anti-Taliban fighters. But taking out Saddam would mean an old-fashioned kind of conflict, with thousands of Marines and G.I.s carrying rifles and grenades. A war, if it comes, would be Rumsfeld's legacy. Win or lose, this would be Rumsfeld...
While Franks said he needed at least 250,000 troops, Rumsfeld wanted no more than 100,000, fearing that larger numbers gathered on Saddam's doorstep would present a tempting target. Rumsfeld was also enamored of the dubious idea, backed by a few gung-ho Pentagon civilians, that a small force could hook up with tribesmen in the north and south and get the job done quickly. That might have worked against ragtag warlords in Afghanistan, but it would be dangerous in Iraq, where Saddam has a 400,000-man army. As the plan bounced between Washington and Franks' Tampa...
Rumsfeld continues to shift troops around as nations fall in and out of the coalition against Saddam. U.S. diplomats worked overtime last week trying to win basing rights for 15,000 troops in Turkey, and they remain optimistic that Saudi Arabia will join Kuwait in allowing U.S. troops to stage from its soil. Rumsfeld also is making an ever growing list of things that could go wrong in a war with Iraq--and peppering his officers to anticipate them. "He has an unsettling tendency to do that," an associate says. As Rumsfeld put it recently, "I'm never satisfied...
...advisers exulted in their candidate's straight talk. "We have gone on the offensive, and are dictating the field," says one. But the White House pounced, charging that Kerry was slouching toward defeatism. At the White House last Thursday, Bush basked in the praise of Iraq's first post-Saddam leader, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and while noting the "persistent violence" that plagues the country, he insisted that elections will be held, as scheduled, in January 2005. "You can understand how hard it is," Bush said, "and still believe we'll succeed." Allawi went even further. "We are succeeding...