Word: basra
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Sunni Muslims, for example in Basra, were joining in the rebellions against Hussein. As Arabs with historic enmity to Persians, the Iraqi Shiites would not have embraced Iran's theocracy. In any case, they deserve the same chance to escape slaughter which the American liberation gave many Kuwaitis. Their lack of oil, an embassy in Washington, and Saudi support does not make their deaths more palatable...
...Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists claims that Iraq was nowhere near completion of a nuclear weapon, and that only the Administration's hyperbole sold the idea. Professor Charles Maier reasonably wonders whether the tens of thousands of soldiers on the Basra road could not have been given more of a chance to leave their vehicles before being slaughtered. Was the slaughter necessary...
Fearing that the location was too dangerous, the Iraqis moved the hostages to a red brick barracks outside Basra, where they were confined to a bare, partly underground room. "I didn't think they would kill us," said Morris, 32. "But I worried that they would hold us for two weeks or a month. My big concern was food and sanitary conditions." Their daily diet was a piece of chicken and a slice of stale bread. That was more than their guards got. "They said we were guests," Morris added. "They didn't like the word prisoners...
...Thursday the Iraqis were ready to hand over the hostages to the Red Cross in Baghdad. But fierce civil warfare made all roads to the capital unsafe. So helicopters flew the group from Basra to Baghdad, dodging flares and tracer fire along the three-hour flight. In Baghdad, the Red Cross treated the famished journalists to what Suau called "our first really good meal in six days" before busing them to Jordan, where they were released. "The ironic thing," Morris recalls, "is that we went from Dhahran to Kuwait City to Basra to Baghdad to Amman, and not one roll...
...second week the revolt against Saddam staggered but stayed alive. In the south, the heartland of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, which has long been dominated by the minority Sunnis, loyalist troops were able to quiet Basra and other restive cities, but only temporarily. As soon as they moved on to other rebellious spots, trouble erupted again "like fire under peat," as a Western diplomat in Riyadh...