Word: baathist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Although the Noumans were Assyrians, an ethnic minority suppressed by Saddam's regime, they were careful to toe the official Baath Party line. Lahib joined the party in 1973 and become an enthusiastic apparatchik. She remembers participating in political debates at Baghdad University, arguing forcefully for Baathist principles like secularism and socialism. She remained loyal even after her father blamed the collapse of his business on the government, which took away his exclusive distribution deals with British and American toolmakers...
...against her will. Although the Noumans were Assyrians, an ethnic minority suppressed by Saddam's regime, they were careful to toe the official Baath Party line. Lahib joined the party in 1973 and become an enthusiastic apparatchik. She remembers participating in political debates at Baghdad University, arguing forcefully for Baathist principles like secularism and socialism. She remained loyal even after her father blamed the collapse of his business on the government, which took away his exclusive distribution deals with British and American toolmakers. After completing a law degree, Nouman took a job as a criminal investigator at the Justice Ministry...
...first 90 sites on that list had proved fruitless. That has reportedly prompted a switch to a far wider search in the hope of turning up unexpected evidence, and a greater effort to track down and interrogate individuals who may have been involved in such programs. The senior Baathist officials currently being interrogated by coalition officers are uniformly denying that the regime had weapons of mass destruction before the war - although coalition commanders believe the captives are lying to protect themselves...
...fear is that these radicals could incite more suicide bombings aimed at U.S. troops. Yet it's far from certain that these groups could combine to form a significant threat. Hizballah and the Islamic Jihad share few values with Saddam's Baathist nationalists. And Iraqi Shi'ites and Iranian Shi'ites are not ideological soul mates; fears after Gulf War I that the two would join up to carve out a separate state aligned with Iran proved to be unfounded...
...Iraqi people, it just isn't clear that they're particularly happy about all this. The Kurds are thrilled; the Shi'ites will not lament Saddam's passing--but there is understandable caution and fear about what comes next. There may well be jubilation when the last of the Baathist thugs has been routed, but those scenes have already been neutered in the Islamic world by the--outrageously distorted--images of American violence and, more problematically, by the plain fact that infidels have made war on an Islamic state. (One imagines that even the Kurds and Shi'ites have understandable...