Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rebel Iraqi army officers overthrew the government and issued a characteristic Middle Eastern communiqué: "With the help of God, we have been able to destroy the enemy of God and of the people, Abdul Karim Kassem, and his gang, who have used the country for their own interests and who choked liberty and disrupted...
...month when good Moslems fast every day from sunup to sundown and tempers are everywhere short. Army trucks and tanks were already rumbling through the streets when at 9:30 a.m., a strident new voice on Radio Baghdad began exulting, "This is the voice of the Iraqi revolution!" Accusing "Kassem the dictator" of having "murdered citizens, weakened the army, imprisoned and executed scores of officers," the broadcaster claimed that the rebels "have destroyed the tyrant...
...fight was only beginning. Rebel units surrounded Baghdad's huge, yellow brick Defense Ministry, the home and headquarters of Premier Kassem, which was defended by 600 trusted soldiers. The rebels brought up tanks and heavy artillery, and Iraqi fighter planes strafed and bombed the Kassem fortress...
Loyal Disciple. The rebel radio voice frenziedly called for the "people" to pour into the streets "to destroy the remnants of the Kassem regime." Between exhortations, martial music filled the air, especially songs extolling Arab unity, and Alahu Akbar (God Is Great), a favorite hymn of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser...
...rebel junta that plotted Kassem's overthrow was apparently made up of captains and lieutenants, except for its leader, ex-Paratroop Colonel Abdul Mustafa. But the man they put forward as their front man came as a shock to Kassem, fighting for his life inside the battered Defense Ministry. The junta named as its new rebel head of state Colonel Abdul Salam Aref, 41, long Kassem's closest friend and most loyal disciple, and alive only because Kassem commuted his 1959 death sentence...