Responding To Saddam

This thesis is an analysis of U.S. policy toward Iraq since the Gulf War. UN Security Council Resolution 687 was the formal cease-fire agreement ending the Gulf War, the resolution requiring the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and created the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). Attempts to gain Iraqi compliance with Resolution 687 consumed U.S. Iraq policy for nine years. In 1999, UNSCOM was disestablished without fulfilling its mandate. The Security Council then adopted Resolution 1284 in attempt to introduce a new inspection regime into Iraq. This thesis examines the factors required to successfully compel Iraqi compliance with Resolution 687 and now Resolution 1284. The findings of this research conclude that current U.S. policy toward Iraq does not contain elements needed to successfully compel Iraqi compliance. The thesis then offers three policy options to deal with Iraq. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed. The thesis concludes that although current policy does not support the re-entry of a viable inspection regime, current policy does support the overall U.S. objective of containing Iraq. It is argued that this policy should be maintained in the near-term while the United States fully develops regime change as a long-term strategy.

Debriefing the President presents an astounding, candid portrait of one of our era’s most notorious strongmen. John Nixon, the first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of Hussein after his capture, offers expert insight into the history and mind of America’s most enigmatic enemy. In December 2003, after one of the largest, most aggressive manhunts in history, US military forces captured Iraqi president Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit. Beset by body-double rumors and false alarms during a nine-month search, the Bush administration needed positive identification of the prisoner before it could make the announcement that would rocket around the world. At the time, John Nixon was a senior CIA leadership analyst who had spent years studying the Iraqi dictator. Called upon to make the official ID, Nixon looked for telltale scars and tribal tattoos and asked Hussein a list of questions only he could answer. The man was indeed Saddam Hussein, but as Nixon learned in the ensuing weeks, both he and America had greatly misunderstood just who Saddam Hussein really was. After years of parsing Hussein’s leadership from afar, Nixon faithfully recounts his debriefing sessions and subsequently strips away the mythology surrounding an equally brutal and complex man. His account is not an apology, but a sobering examination of how preconceived ideas led Washington policymakers—and the Bush White House—astray. Unflinching and unprecedented, Debriefing the President exposes a fundamental misreading of one of the modern world’s most central figures and presents a new narrative that boldly counters the received account.

As the crisis with Iraq continues, Americans have questions. Is war really necessary? What can it accomplish? What broad vision of U.S. foreign policy underlies the determination to remove Saddam Hussein? What were the failures of the last couple of decades that brought us to a showdown with a dictator developing weapons of mass destruction? What is the relationship between war with Iraq and the events of 9-11? The answers to these questions are found in this timely book by two of America's leading foreign policy thinkers. Kristol and Kaplan lay out a detailed rationale for action against Iraq. But to understand why we must fight Saddam, the authors assert, it is necessary to go beyond the details of his weapons of mass destruction, his past genocidal actions against Iran and his own people, and the U.N. resolutions he has ignored. The explanation begins with how the dominant policy ideas of the last decade--Clintonian liberalism and Republican realpolitik--led American policymakers to turn a blind eye to the threat Iraq has posed for well over a decade. As Kristol and Kaplan make clear, the war over Iraq is in large part a war of competing ideas about America's role in the world. The authors provide the first comprehensive explanation of the strategy of "preemption" guiding the Bush Administration in dealing with this crisis. They show that American foreign policy for the 21st century is being forged in the crucible of our response to Saddam. The war over Iraq will presumably be the end of Saddam Hussein. But it will be the beginning of a new era in American foreign policy. William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan are indispensable guides to the era that lies ahead.

Saddam Hussein, one of the world’s most infamous dictators, rose to power through Iraq’s powerful Baath Party and became the nation’s president in 1979. His goals included achieving pan-Arabism, more evenly distributing the nation’s oil wealth, and extending the party’s power by reaching into every aspect of Iraqis’ lives. However, through his failed economic programs, greed, corruption, and the murder of thousands, Hussein and his government brought ruin to the nation. His dictatorship came to an end with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam was later captured by U.S. forces, tried in an Iraqi court and convicted of mass murder, and executed in 2006 by Iraqi authorities. Read this book to learn more about the internal workings of one of the world’s most devastating dictatorships.

In March 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq under the fallacious precept of finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi government was toppled and its president Saddam Hussein was captured and put on trial. No weapons of mass destruction were found and the American occupation served to inflame a historic dispute between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The American invasion of Iraq turned into a victory for Iran without loss of Iranian money or blood. The Execution of Saddam Hussein: An American-Iranian Game describes the Iraqi situation as of early 2007 and reveals facts suppressed by the American administration about the influence of Iran on the U.S.-occupied territory. The trial of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is described as a politically expedient farce that culminated in a barbaric execution-a joint work of America and Iran. The conduct of the trial, the assassination of two defense lawyers, and the political pressure that impelled the first judge to resign from the court are outlined. The role of America in the history of Saddam Hussein's regime is reviewed and a rationale is provided for the evident submission of the Bush administration to Iran's influence in Iraq.

From a Western perspective, the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 largely fulfilled the first President Bush's objective: "In, out, do it, do it right, get gone. That's the message." But in the Arab world, the causes and consequences of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and his subsequent defeat by a U.S.-led coalition were never so clear-cut. The potent blend of Islam and Arab nationalism that Saddam forged to justify the unjustifiable—his invasion of a Muslim state—gained remarkable support among both Muslims and Arabs and continued to resonate in the Middle East long after the fighting ended. Indeed, as this study argues in passing, it became a significant strand in the tangled web of ideologies and actions that led to the attacks of 9/11. This landmark book offers the first in-depth investigation of how Saddam Hussein used Islam and Arab nationalism to legitimate his invasion of Kuwait in the eyes of fellow Muslims and Arabs, while delegitimating the actions of the U.S.-led coalition and its Arab members. Jerry M. Long addresses three fundamental issues: how extensively and in what specific ways Iraq appealed to Islam during the Kuwait crisis; how elites, Islamists, and the elusive Arab "street," both in and out of the coalition, responded to that appeal and why they responded as they did; and the longer-term effects that resulted from Saddam's strategy.

“Essential . . . one for the ages . . . a must read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post “Authoritative . . . The most comprehensive account yet of that smoldering wreck of foreign policy, one that haunts us today.” —LA Times One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 To Start a War paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. Robert Draper’s fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective scurrying for evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false—evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.

Presents a description by a lieutenant colonel in the 1st Battalion, 22nd infantry regiment of the strategies and resources used in the hunt for Saddam Hussein, which resulted in his capture in December of 2003 in Operation Red Dawn.

The authors present a vital analysis of the foreign policy-making processes of the two Bush administrations prior to the attacks on Iraq. In a thorough comparison, they show how both presidents used historical analogies to evaluate information, relied on instinct to formulate decisions, and drew on moral language to justify their choices.