This time, he acted not to invade a nation but to reassert his authority over a part of Iraq. Rolling his military into the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq, Saddam [Hussein] hoped to recover not just land but reputation at home and in the Mideast.

The opening came when one Kurdish faction fighting for control in northern Iraq asked Saddam to intervene against another Kurdish faction supported by arch-enemy Iran.

Saddam has played such high-stakes wargames time and again since he became Iraq's supreme leader in 1979. He warred with Iran in an eight-year conflict that left 1 million people dead. Then he briefly occupied Kuwait. His latest gamble looks equally risky, although the murky politics of the Kurdish infighting may have led Saddam to believe a Western response would be less certain.