Word: vacuums
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only to hear minutes later that the bombs had landed in the desert or the gulf. Even commanders in Kuwait held videoconferences with Franks while wearing their gas masks. The haphazard nature of Iraq's response convinced Pentagon officials that the U.S. strike had succeeded in creating a power vacuum inside the Iraqi military command, cutting links between Baghdad and its forces in the field. But the possibility that those forces would panic, firing off more weapons and sabotaging southern oil fields, persuaded the U.S. commanders to begin the ground war on Thursday, 24 hours ahead of schedule...
...fearful and shell-shocked but might have information about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) concealed from U.N. inspectors. And they would be working against the clock. "Once the regime falls, the cities are imploding and the Baath Party is taking off running, there's going to be a vacuum," says Captain Vern Tubbs, 37, coordinator of the civil affairs mission for the 3rd Infantry. "We'll be trying to keep the country from collapsing...
...Arabs are very concerned that the collapse of Saddam's iron-fisted, centralized order will lead to the fragmentation of Iraq along sectarian lines. They fear that the power vacuum created by the end of 24 years of Saddam's absolute rule will ignite an orgy of sectarian struggles and vendetta killings among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. They worry that this, in turn, will prompt the intervention of Turkish and Iranian military forces seeking the protection of their respective interests. The dread is that America's war will turn Iraq into "another Palestine," a consuming crisis that feeds Middle East...
...last fall, negotiating a unanimous vote on Security Council Resolution 1441, but that was an exception. Powell's bolder attempts at diplomacy - the attempt to negotiate with North Korea in 2001 and with Yasser Arafat in 2002 - have been thwarted by the White House. Arrogance has filled the vacuum. Significant allies like Turkey are bullied or bribed, or both; they are not consulted and not listened to. Even when the President says he wants to achieve a diplomatic solution, as in North Korea, he does so undiplomatically, against the advice of our allies, refusing to negotiate directly with the North...
...transforming an authoritarian regime into a democratic one. But Iraq has special disadvantages. Many experts on Iraq, both in the Arab world and the West, fear that the U.S. is glossing over the realities of imposing democracy on a country that is deeply tribal, vengeful and embittered. The vacuum left by a collapse of Saddam's iron-fisted order could ignite power struggles and vendetta killings that could trigger long-term civil strife or even the breakup of the country. There's no democrat in waiting to step in if the dictator departs. Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds would jostle...