And here are dozens of engaging photos of Hussein, chatting with troops at the Kuwaiti front and comforting Baghdad residents at the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This map, it's very nice. Critics of the sanctions, now almost a decade old, argue that they have failed to dislodge Hussein but have caused untold misery to millions of ordinary Iraqis. But supporters of the sanctions say they are the most effective way of keeping Hussein in check as he defies U.N. resolutions and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. Unanswered questions remain in the areas of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. . . .
Sanctions are the leverage the international community has to get the government of Iraq to comply.
That is the goal. In the past 10 years, international attitudes toward Iraq have done an abrupt about-face. More than three dozen countries joined the U.S.-led allied coalition, including most of the Persian Gulf states and even nations like Syria that had never been friendly toward the West. But with the war over and the sanctions dragging on far longer than anyone expected, there is increasing sympathy for Iraq and growing hostility toward the United States and Britain, the sanctions' most ardent enforcers. Most Arab nations have called for an end to the embargo and some have have resumed diplomatic relations with Baghdad.