British journalist Robert Fisk, a critic of Western policies in the Middle East, argues that recent Western conflicts against the Middle East, after the end of the Cold War, have been part of a new perpetual war. He suggests that former U.S. President George H.W. Bush launched attacks on Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan to distract the population from his domestic political problems. In addition, he claims that despite victorious claims after the first Gulf War that Saddam Hussein had been "defanged", he was again the target of Western attacks until his execution in 2006.