fro: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Iraq and a Hard Place Gulf War Changed Nothing So much for Gulf War heroes. Ten years after Saddam Hussein's tanks rolled into Kuwait, precipitating the Gulf war, the Iraqi dictator is still firmly in power and the politics of the region are little changed, writes Patrick Bishop AS they sweltered in their desert hooches, waiting for the action to begin, every American soldier told you the same thing: "We're here to kick Saddam's butt. If we don't, we're just going to have to come back and do it in 10 years. And next time he'll probably have nuclear weapons." Saddam's butt was indeed kicked, but not hard enough. A decade after the crisis began, he has yet to acquire a nuclear arsenal, but he remains the biggest threat to peace in the region while continuing to torture and murder his own people. He has established himself so firmly in Western political demonology that it is easy to forget that he used to be our friend. America's feud with the Khomeini regime meant that Saddam had our backing in his long, slogging war with Iran, even though it was he who started it. In 1988, British and American warships mounted a huge convoy protection operation to shield Iraqi tankers from Iranian attack as they sailed through the Strait of Hormuz. When the row over Iraq's claim to the Kuwaiti oilfields broke out, no one, at first, took it terribly seriously. It was a "tiny cloud in the summer sky", the Gulf savants opined, that would soon blow over. But then there was the invasion and overnight Saddam stopped being a sort of Middle Eastern Idi Amin and became the new Hitler. The allied war aim was simple: the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. American rhetoric, though, suggested there was a higher purpose. This was the first big international upheaval since the end of the Cold War. The Russians, too, were wearing white hats now. Together, the superpowers were going to build a fairer, more just world. The American tank crews and Marines parked in their tens of thousands in the border dunes believed it. Victory, they thought, might not only rid the world of a menace, but also introduce some American values to an area that looked as if it could use them. Many of the Arab forces bolted on to the American military machine hoped for the same. They have been disappointed. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the two main beneficiaries of the intervention, are stubbornly politically primitive. In Kuwait, only a small minority of the population have the vote. None of them are women. Saudi Arabia remains firmly in the hands of one family, who use the country's oil coffers as a personal bank, force their womenfolk into medieval servitude and deny political and religious rights to anyone outside their orbit. Both countries are incapable of defending themselves and have periodic panic attacks when a playful Saddam moves troops in their direction. Saddam himself appears to show little sign of losing his grip in the part of the country that matters, the Sunni centre. Control of the distribution of the food the regime is allowed to buy with oil revenues has created a patronage network that rewards those inside his geographical power base at the expense of the rest. Other money, such as the $1 million a day he makes exporting oil through Turkey and black market revenue from the strong trade through Dubai, goes on keeping the security apparatus and the Republican Guards sweet. The army, once the only real challenge to his rule, has been emasculated by repeated purges. In the north, the Kurdish problem has diminished since the Talabani and Barzani clans started fighting each other over who should get the rake-off from the oil passing through Kurdistan to Turkey. The Shias in the south are restive but subdued. Both they and the Kurds can look up every day and see the condensation trails of the British and American jets patrolling the skies in the name of their safety. They know better than anyone that the activity is meaningless. Saddam's ground forces could roll in any time and the allies, whose mandate covers only fixed-wing aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery, would be powerless to stop them. Having lost its bases in Kurdistan in 1996, the external opposition is fragmented, fractious and dependent on the US Congress and the British and American secret services for funds. The main danger to Saddam remains those around him. The Saddam clan has a strong claim to being one of the most dysfunctional families in history, a Baghdad version of the Borgias. In recent years he has murdered two of his sons-in-law and fallen out badly with his three half-brothers. His two sons, Uday and Qusay, are locked into a vicious rivalry. Uday, the elder, blames Qusay, who is responsible for family security, for not protecting him from an assassination attempt which has left him partly paralysed. Saddam, 64, is rumoured to be ill, though exiles discount stories of cancer. A general who fled four years ago and now studies him on television, said: "He is yellow and old and has aged 15 years since 1996." His appetite for trouble seems undiminished, however. He may lack a nuclear capacity but he is believed to have chemical and biological weapons and last month test-fired a missile with a range of 150 miles. A new confrontation with United Nations weapons inspectors looms later this month. Nearly 10 years on, despite the immense expenditure of Iraqi blood and allied treasure, Saddam remains a primary potential cause of trouble in the world. But this time there is no more talk of kicking butt. The London Telegraph, August 2, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. 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