Word: saudi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...August 1914. The President's adamancy in sticking to his Maine vacation (the tense, almost angry flailing at golf balls, the powerboat Fidelity bucking out of harbor, a war getting organized by cellular phone) contributed to an air of the surreal. So did the alien theater of war: the Saudi peninsula's shimmering heat, its lunar landscapes, its customs and culture out of other centuries altogether...
...when Air Force Sergeant John Campisi was buried in West Covina, Calif., the townspeople turned out in a relatively rare display of community. Campisi, 31, the father of four children, was killed by a truck on a dark Saudi airfield during the first wave of U.S. deployment. He was the conflict's first casualty. The dead man's mother said she received many calls from other mothers whose sons had just left for Saudi Arabia. "All of them seem to support sending our boys there," she said. "They seem to -- but with worry." West Covina's grief for Sergeant Campisi...
...walked a fine line between the determined vacationer, zipping about in his fuel-guzzling speedboat, and the grim-faced Commander in Chief facing the greatest challenge of his presidency. Bush ordered the first call-up of reserves since Vietnam and approved the sale of more F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia. He declared that in the face-off with Saddam nothing less than America's "way of life" was at stake. He abandoned his earlier fastidiousness about how to describe the thousands of Western civilians, including 3,000 Americans, held by Saddam and finally used the only accurate word: hostages...
...time. If, for example, the embargo takes many months to exert serious pressure on Saddam, says a White House official, "Iraq could simply hunker down and wait us out." A protracted stalemate could cause U.S. allies to tire of the mission or permit friction between American troops and the Saudi population to fester. In the U.S., public impatience with the cost of the buildup could lead to demands for a withdrawal...
Some within the Administration contend that an Iraqi retreat that left Saddam's formidable war machine intact, or him in power, would be unacceptable. Once American forces are strong enough, they would welcome some rash act by Saddam, such as an attack on Saudi Arabia's oil fields with high explosives or poison gas. That would give the U.S. an excuse to try to oust him by force. Other officials argued that the blockade alone, if it succeeded in forcing Saddam to disgorge Kuwait, would be enough to fell him. Said another senior official: "One way or another...