Word: wars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...officers like to talk of the multinational effort under way at Incirlik, but it's a far cry from the 28-nation alliance that ousted Iraq from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, or even the 19-nation war in Kosovo. The current force of 1,274 includes 1,058 Americans, 179 British, and 37 Turks supporting about 45 planes. The Turks fly no planes into Iraq, and the British fly only reconnaissance planes there. When it comes to dropping bombs, it is an all-American show...
...years ago, the agency poured millions of dollars into a guerrilla force of the I.N.C., a loose coalition of Iraqi exile groups led by Ahmed Chalabi, a wealthy Iraqi Shi'ite and skillful political organizer. But with the White House nervous about being sucked into a contra-style insurgency war, the CIA pulled the plug on its support for Chalabi's guerrillas and turned to Iraqi officers in Saddam's inner circle who might topple him. That ended in an embarrassing debacle for the agency when Saddam uncovered the plots and crushed them. The CIA is trying to recruit...
...problem with simply discarding hope for an on-the-ground insurgency is that the in-the-air war is expensive and, top commanders will sometimes admit, ineffective. Almost every day at Incirlik is Groundhog Day, as in Bill Murray's 1993 film. "You wake up, you come in, you get ready to launch the aircraft, you launch the aircraft, they come back, you recover them, you go home," says Staff Sergeant George Palo, who maintains aircraft fuel systems. "We don't have a lot of calendars around here, because the only day that counts...
Military experts are split on the effectiveness of this kind of wait-and-bomb war. Retired General Merrill McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff during the Gulf War, believes it represents the prototypical 21st century conflict, in which a grinding, persistent battle plan trumps a short, intense war. "The bombing isn't hurting us, and it is hurting Saddam," he says. But Richard Haas, who helped run the Gulf War as a key member of the Bush Administration's national-security team, says a superpower's might evaporates as such a stalemate drags on. "When a great power acts...
Much of the war against Saddam has faded to the level of indistinct chatter, where it is hard to sort signal from noise. The problem is bad on the military front, but it is even worse among the Iraqi insurgents, who have to be coached, caressed and cajoled by the State Department. Last weekend 300 delegates from various Iraqi opposition groups gathered in New York City, where U.S. officials hoped they would finally lay aside their feuds and present a unified front. That didn't happen. The major group representing Iraq's southern Shi'ites, the Iran-backed Supreme Council...