... not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved. After Saddam: Still No Good Options in a Wrong War Charles V. Peña Saddam Hussein’s capture by U.S. forces just before Christmas 2003 was certainly a joyous holiday gift for the people of Iraq...

.... I Iraq’s rise to notoriety in the Middle East and beyond has been meteoric, very much a product of its war with Iran in the 1980s. In horrific warfare against the Iranian Revolution, supported by the United States and its Arab allies in the gulf, Saddam Hussein not only sought to realize his...

... stubbornly resisted. For eleven years, Saddam Hussein has been the focus of unrelenting U.S. animosity, the man Americans love to hate. Three successive administrations, ably and eagerly assisted by a media that rarely misses the chance to echo and promote whatever...

... and must be dealt with sooner or later and see the present international climate and successful campaign in Afghanistan as providing the ideal opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Prominent among the anti-Iraq war party are Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Review Board...

... War (1980–89), the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and the recent war against the Saddam Hussein regime. Ironically, during this period the Arab-Israeli peace process moved haltingly but successfully: two disengagement agreements brokered by the United States between Egypt and Israel, a similar...

... Quarterly 18:3  DOI 10.1215/10474552-2007-015 Copyright 2007 by Mediterranean Affairs, Inc. 32  Mediterranean Quarterly: Summer 2007 information linking Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda, a hypothesis that Tenet surely knew was completely untrue. Tenet had essentially two roles, one...

... (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and the termination of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime have had wide-ranging effects worldwide, but nowhere have they been more immediate than in the Middle East itself, where they have affected all existing issues and all the major states. The quick end of major hostilities...

...- denly and completely once American units entered Baghdad. The collapse followed the surprisingly good account the Iraqis gave of themselves at the beginning. The collapse cannot be explained simply by what appears to be one more example of Saddam Hussein’s inept micromanagement. The superb U.S...

... administration persuaded itself and most of the country that a rogue regime like Saddam Hussein’s, left in possession of WMD could, sooner or latter, make them available to global terrorist groups, which in turn would not hesitate to use them against the United States and its allies. Sober voices from...

.... Primakov met with Saddam Hussein in 1990 in Bagh- dad, where they discussed possibilities for avoiding war with the United States. Moscow gradually turned into Washington’s half-ally, trying not so much to avoid war but to guarantee that the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from 90 Mediterranean Quarterly...

... armed resistance as a means to diminish American influ- ence from Islamic nations. The removal of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny will do little to increase the Vincent M. Cannistraro was director of intelligence on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1987 and is former chief...

... to start wars themselves. Learning nothing from the North Korean invasion of South Korea, US officials, com- menting on the tensions between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and small Kuwait in 1990, stated that the United States did not get involved in intra-­Arab ter- ritorial disputes. Saddam, who the United...

... Fahd’s “first instinct” was to attempt a solution of the Iraq-Kuwait dispute over oil production in 1990 through mediation among Arab brothers, but after two days of such efforts he saw no use in continuing. Nonetheless, having been given personal assurances by Saddam Hussein that he would...

... dismantlement of the Taliban regime has caused in the Muslim world, that was a minor development compared to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Saddam Hussein was no one’s hero or favorite in the Muslim world. However, Iraq was a major Muslim and Arab state. The disfiguration of a major Muslim state...

... Northern Alliance, defeated the Taliban government and replaced it with a secular regime in Kabul. The second phase was to get rid of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who had been a thorn in the side of the Republican hawks since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. As Bush told a group of friends in Texas...

..., appropriations.senate.gov/ releases/hearings-sep21-22.pdf, 3–24. 54 Mediterranean Quarterly: Winter 2005 sions did not fully support the case of those who have argued that there was no connection between the government of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. But neither did the analysis and conclusions support...

... in challenging the United States and threatening to use its veto power to prevent the world’s remaining superpower from acting unilaterally. France also underestimated the administration’s resolve to act against Saddam Hussein and its determi- nation not to allow any institution, including the Security...

... plans for a northern front in the war against Saddam Hussein. But even if Washington had accepted Ankara’s price, it is not clear that the Turkish government would have gone ahead with the agreement. An Isla- mist civilian government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had taken...

... one is to blame Saddam Hussein for everything and initiate a major war against Iraq, which will only generate even more hatred toward America from the Muslim world. As important as the international issues are, however, I am particularly concerned about their domestic consequences. My subject...

... Saddam Hussein’s regime was crushed, Iraqi military resistance would fade quickly. According to that sce- nario, American military commanders would transfer political power within weeks to an Iraqi transition government and begin to draw down U.S. forces from the 150,000 who waged the war...