Word: saddams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who presided over the ceremony in a former Saddam Hussein palace at a military base near Baghdad Airport, lauded Petraeus as "one of our nation's great battle captains." Petraeus, 55, will take over as head of U.S Central Command next month, which will give him responsibility for the U.S. missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan...
...rumor that an aboriginal boy on a bicycle had been chased by police and died after he was tragically impaled on a spiked fence; the rumor incited a group of 200 youths to throw home-made explosives at police, 40 of whom were injured in the melee. The late Saddam Hussein regularly spread rumors to discourage resistance to his dictatorship. In light of this, rumors that he possessed weapons of mass destruction may ironically have first originated from Hussein himself, as well as Hussein's opponents (like Ahmed Chalabi and other Iraqi defectors) who desired U.S. assistance in toppling...
...rooting out insurgents. While critics at the time accused him of alienating Iraqi civilians in the process, he won praise under Petraeus for taking a more nuanced tack, particularly in dealing with Sunni tribal leaders. In 2003, Odierno was commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which found and captured Saddam Hussein in his underground bunker...
...Maliki, as ever, is building his own influence through his ability to perform a delicate balancing act between the contending forces on the ground - and, irksome as the fact may be to Washington, Iran is increasingly influential in post-Saddam Iraq. Al-Maliki's pushback against Washington in the SOFA talks is widely seen as in part a response to intense pressure from Tehran...
...Iraq hasn't been able to procure arms since it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the U.S. invasion in 2003 pretty much crushed whatever military hardware Saddam Hussein had left. So Iraq is starting from scratch in rebuilding its military. "The Iraqi military is growing in strength and capability very rapidly now," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says. "They are turning into a very formidable force that not only will be able to deal with internal threats, but also handle external threats in a very dangerous part of the world." While the deal would require reviews from the Pentagon, State Department...