Word: arabize
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...considerations informed Cheney's view. The first, according to Dave Gribbin, Cheney's closest aide at the Pentagon, was practical. Just a few days after the invasion of Kuwait, Bush had assigned Cheney to win support from Saddam's Arab neighbors. "He was out there early telling the Arab world that the U.S. would come in and do just a couple of things," says Gribbin. "Get Saddam out of Kuwait and dismantle his ability to harm his neighbors. Since he promised that, he stuck with that. To occupy Iraq wasn't in the deal." The second reason--the more interesting...
...first Bush Administration stood back. He made defiance a pillar of his power. "Saddam sees himself as a lone figure, battling the greatest power on earth," says Dr. Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist who has profiled the Iraqi leader for the CIA. Saddam felt, as did many others in the Arab world, that he had "won" the first Gulf War by not losing everything...
Saddam long ago learned how to keep power, no matter what the cost. It wasn't just ferocious ambition that drove him from shepherd to dictator by age 42. His Darwinian outlook took root among the clan machinations of his native Tikrit, during the years when Arab nationalism began to flower. Freud would have had a field day with Saddam's tortured relationships with his family, including, Post says, a suicidal mother who tried to abort him. Saddam's father died before he was born, and after his mother married a man who brutalized Saddam, the illiterate 10-year...
...history of disastrous miscalculations, especially in war. In 1980 he saw the revolutionary confusion inside Iran as a golden opportunity. No military expert, yet commander in chief, he thought a quick strike by his superior forces could snatch back some disputed territory from Iran and earn gratitude from Arab regimes for slaying the Persian fundamentalist Shi'ite threat. But his army failed to break Ayatullah Khomeini's revolutionary forces for eight years. Whenever they threatened to conquer pieces of his territory, he shelled them with lethal chemicals, setting a pattern of resorting to extreme measures anytime his survival seemed imperiled...
...been nothing if not clear about his intention to get rid of Saddam. The dream in Washington was that once Iraq's leader was convinced of certain defeat, he would depart to stay alive. But among those who knew him, exile did not seem an option. Saddam's Arab honor would not permit him to flee. "He follows the code of the old-time Arab knights," says Toujan Faisal, a former Jordanian member of parliament. There are less romantic explanations as well. As head of a regime of cutthroats, Saddam could not afford to show signs of weakness; the minute...