Word: mansure
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...when Kevorkian attended the suicide of Ronald Mansur, a Realtor with bone and lung cancer, he did not bring a video camera, and when it was over, he did not call a press conference. There was no suicide note; there were no relatives looking on and no explanations. Just an anonymous call to 911, telling police where to find the body -- in effect, telling the State of Michigan to go to hell...
Police arrived at a drab cinder-block real-estate office to find Mansur dressed in slippers and wrapped in a white-knit blanket; he was slumped in an easy chair with the telltale mask strapped to his face. A string tied to the middle finger of his left hand was connected to a clip on the tubes running from two cylinders labeled CARBON MONOXIDE. The body was gaunt, the skin yellow-green. For the past few months, Mansur had been too sick to drive and carried a morphine pump around with him to combat the pain. "He was in hell...
...Kuwaiti sheiks and destined for the tables of privileged Iraqis. But there is almost no medicine for high blood pressure, heart conditions and asthma. Some factories are beginning to shut down, people are hoarding their money, many shopkeepers sit idle. In the diplomatic residences of the fashionable Al- Mansur neighborhood, ambassadors and attaches debate the options for Saddam and the U.S.: almost all are bad, and most end in grief or horror. Among Westerners, there is some gallows humor. Among ordinary Iraqis, it seems, there is acceptance, chagrin, forlorn hope or simple noncomprehension...
...Though the wealthy can afford the Kuwaiti delicacies on sale in the fancy food shops of Masbah and Al-Mansur, ordinary Iraqis are being squeezed by rationing and rising prices at government-owned stores. The cost of Marlboros has increased threefold since the invasion. "You can find everything at the private market, but who can pay?" says a man outside a grocery...
This story is supported by Mansur Rafizadeh, a former high official in SAVAK, the Shah's secret police. Long a double agent serving both SAVAK and the CIA, Rafizadeh worked solely for the CIA after the Shah fell from power in 1979. According to Rafizadeh, Ghorbanifar first came to the CIA's attention in late 1980 when the Carter Administration was desperate to win the release of U.S. hostages from the seized American embassy in Tehran. George Cave, a retired CIA agent then working under a contract with the agency, asked Rafizadeh if Ghorbanifar could help. The former SAVAK agent...