Word: birthdaying
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Kennedy was four when her father was inaugurated in 1961 and just five days shy of her sixth birthday when he was assassinated. Determined to preserve some semblance of normality, her mother famously insisted that the birthday party go on as scheduled. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer in 1994, and with John Jr.'s death in 1999 when the plane he was piloting crashed, Caroline is the last surviving member of the martyred president's immediate family. Public interest in her is more intense than ever, and Kennedy watchers believe she feels an increasing sense of duty to carry...
...hatter might feel at home in the Wonderland of Iraq. The day is already growing hot as lines of ramshackle buses and black-windowed Mercedes jam the normally empty highway to Tikrit, the rural hometown of Saddam Hussein. It's April 28, Saddam's 65th birthday. Crowds of military men with fat moustaches, sheiks in flowing robes and farmers in shabby pants spill onto the expansive parade ground Saddam has built for special occasions like this. High-ranking guests fill up chairs in a large pseudohistorical reviewing stand where Mussolini would have felt at home...
Saddam is nowhere in sight for his Tikrit party or any of the other parades and cake cuttings orchestrated across Iraq during the six-day birthday celebration. He is, more than ever, an invisible ruler, his authority wielded from the shadows, where he hides from potential assassins. The Potemkin parties were intended to deliver a message to any Iraqi citizen feeling restive, to any foreign government contemplating his overthrow. The all-powerful puppet master can make his whole nation sing his praises as a blunt reminder: I am still here. It won't be easy...
...Bush Administration hopes the hollowness of that birthday scene is a symbol of the true state of the archenemy's regime: brittle and rotting from within, held together only by force and bribery. The White House has concluded that Saddam poses a clear and present danger that must be eliminated. "He is a dangerous man possessing the world's most dangerous weapons," President Bush has said. "It is incumbent upon freedom-loving nations to hold him accountable, which is precisely what the United States of America will...
...inadequate and the world will turn against the Americans before they succeed in taking him down. Until that day comes, if it comes, Saddam will rule on from the shadows that protect him from a lifetime's worth of enemies. For him, as long as he's alive, every birthday that passes is another glorious victory...