Word: baathist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Still, U.S. officials are worried that an election as early as this summer would give Iraq's Shi'ites, who make up 60% of the population but were repressed by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, a tremendous edge. With Saddam's Baathist structures gone, the Sunnis are disorganized and demoralized. Shi'ite religious institutions, by contrast, are strong. Among some in Washington, that raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iranian revolution, in which fundamentalist Shi'ite clerics took charge of the government, which proved hostile...
...less lethal with him in captivity. According to some U.S. and Iraqi officials, that is in part because of the rising influence and activity of Islamic extremists. These militants are assuming a leadership role in the anti-American insurgency as the ranks of Iraqis loyal to the secular Baathist regime dwindle...
...jihadists are stirring up those sentiments in the one place that generally remains off limits to the Americans: the mosque. U.S. and Iraqi officials say a worrying number of mosques are providing support for insurgents, whether jihadist, Baathist or both. Early this month U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Ibn Taymiyah mosque in Baghdad, arresting the mosque's imam and 31 suspected militants and uncovering a cache of weaponry. Still, according to a senior military official, U.S. forces in Iraq have conducted relatively few raids inside mosques for fear of offending ordinary Iraqis. Says the official: "You could win the battle...
...prisoner: Whether to try him in Iraq or abroad; how to extract essential information from a doomed man without offering him a deal, and so on. Even more important is the question of whether his capture, together with the earlier elimination of his sons, will help draw Saddam?s Baathist supporters into a new, peaceful political process. Bremer reached out to them in Sunday's press conference: ?With the arrest of Saddam Hussein, there is a new opportunity for the members of the former regime, whether military or civilian, to end their bitter opposition...
...military acknowledges studying the Israeli experience. Like the Israelis, the U.S. is facing an insurgency - at least in the Sunni Triangle - waged by a combination of secular nationalists (of the former Baathist regime) and militant Islamists, operating with a significant degree of support from the local population, willing to use a wide range of combat tactics and able to enlist a significant number of "shaheeds" (fighters willing to die in pursuit of martyrdom), although in Iraq some of these may be foreign jihadis. U.S. commanders don't have a clear picture of who is behind the insurgency. That fact alone...