Politics
Saddam Hussein launched the multi-billion-dollar subway project in 1983 to alleviate traffic congestion in Baghdad's streets. During the Iran-Iraq war the subway project was halted.
At a December 2002 press conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of "enormous miles and miles and miles of underground tunneling" that prevented the United Nations from properly inspecting Saddam's WMD stocks. Hussein al-Shahristani, a scientist imprisoned by Saddam, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that "We believe now it is more than 100 kilometers of very complex network, multilayer tunnels."
Read more about this topic: Baghdad Metro
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”
—Mario Puzo, U.S. author, screenwriter, and Francis Ford Coppola, U.S. director, screenwriter. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)