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:
“Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices.... Politics has once again become religious.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)