Word: baath
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Aside from Saddam's principal aides and Baath Party regulars, the only Iraqis who publicly pretend enthusiasm for the coming struggle are schoolchildren. Several thousand parade past the U.S. embassy, shouting, "Down, down Bush!" Each day in their classrooms they salute their leader, are taught the lessons of the reunification of Kuwait and are drilled in the ugly designs of the Americans and Zionists...
Others are not so sure. In Jordan observers note that the facedown with Saddam has united Communists, Baath socialists and Islamic fundamentalists into a single anti-American front, something that has never happened before. If Saddam should succeed in bringing Israel into a war with the U.S., the result would be sheer political disaster. Such a conflict would look like a ganging up of the U.S. and Israel against the Arabs. Hatred of the U.S. could lead to coups toppling pro-American governments throughout the region as well as widespread terrorism...
...nearest he ever got to combat was assassination. As a student, he had joined the Baath Party, an underground anti-Western, pan-Arab socialist movement. The party put him on a team assigned to murder Iraq's military ruler, Abdul Karim Kassem. Saddam and his confederates sprayed Kassem's station wagon with machine-gun fire as it sped through downtown Baghdad, but they missed their target. Although bodyguards killed several of the assailants, Saddam escaped with a bullet in his left leg. In the glorified words of his own hagiography -- the truth is less dramatic -- he carved out the bullet...
...Saddam returned to Baghdad in 1963 and started organizing a militia for the Baath Party, which finally succeeded in grabbing power permanently in 1968. Under the nominal leadership of General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the man who held the real control was his relative Saddam Hussein. Keeping things in the family, Saddam married another relative, Sajida Talfah, the daughter of the officer who had raised...
...Baath Party was firmly entrenched, and Saddam embarked on a rising career that earned him the monicker "Butcher of Baghdad." He ordered up, presided over and even participated in executions of rivals, some of them once close friends. Two years ago, Saddam ordered the trial of his own son Uday, who had clubbed to death a presidential bodyguard. Eventually Saddam succumbed to appeals for clemency, and Uday was merely sent into brief exile...