Word: saddams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Raised on Nintendo and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the troops fighting this war want to experience the kind of battle promised to them by Splinter Cell and Total Recall. The videos they make are an attempt to salvage a war whose coherence crumbled soon after Saddam's statue fell. However, while they offer the credibility of an unvarnished image, they lack any meaningful context of what came before and after the clip, or what's happening outside the frame. One veteran described them to the Wall Street Journal as "kind of like the ESPN highlight reels - the music is pumping...
...also clear now that a major consequence of George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy has been an emboldened Iran. The U.S. "has been Iran's very best friend," a diplomat from a predominantly Sunni nation told me recently. "You have eliminated its enemies, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. You have even reduced yourselves as a threat to Iran because you have spent so much blood and treasure in Iraq...
...honest broker between Israel, Syria and Lebanon to put an end to a similar flare-up. But back then, Syria was in control of Lebanon and participating in U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel over the fate of the Golan Heights; Iraq was still ruled by Saddam Hussein's tyranny, which also functioned to limit Iran's regional ambitions; and the Oslo peace process offered Israel and the Palestinians the prospect of peace. Today dialogue amongst the various parties is rare, even as the prospects for U.S. success on key issues such as stabilizing Iraq, fighting al-Qaeda and preventing...
...Iran may also see its interests served by the escalation of violence in Lebanon and Gaza - regardless of whether or not Hizballah actually coordinated its decision with Tehran. Iran's regional influence has grown substantially as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which removed its arch-enemy, Saddam Hussein, and brought to power a Shi'ite coalition government dominated by elements allied with Tehran. Prospects for averting the slide towards civil war in Iraq appear to be grim without active support from Iran, which retains considerable influence over the main Shi'ite militias...
...fall of one of the Arab world's most formidable regimes has left religious and ethnic factions scrambling for power in a near civil war that seems to get bloodier by the day. Iran has been intent on filling the regional power vacuum left by the toppling of Saddam. Besides continuing to back Hizballah, which it actually created in 1982 after Israeli forces launched a wide-scale invasion of Lebanon to destroy the PLO, Iran has been extending its influence inside Iraq and could end up the dominant foreign influence there when the U.S. ultimately withdraws. So confident - or reckless...