Circle in the Sand
Chapter One
1
THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH
The Americans were coming, and Saddam Hussein was on his best behavior.
He had good reason to be circumspect on this morning of April 12, 1990. The preceding two weeks had been bad ones for Iraq's relations with the United States, and Iraq faced the likely threat of U.S. sanctions. And better than anyone else within his narrow ruling circle, Saddam knew that sanctions were a prospect that Iraq's decimated economy and bankrupt treasury could ill afford.
The Iraqi ruler's longtime obsession with acquiring weapons of mass destruction had fueled this latest flare-up with Washington. On March 28, Britain had arrested five men accused of trying to smuggle U.S.-made kryton switches-sophisticated devices used only for detonating nuclear warheads-to Iraq. Three days later, the Washington Post reported that U.S. Customs had intercepted a similar shipment of nuclear detonators the previous year. On April 2, Saddam boasted in a televised speech to the Iraqi people that their country's arsenal of chemical weapons was on par with that of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Iraqi ruler promised his subjects, "By Allah, we will make th ... read full excerpt from Circle in the Sand ebook
