Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Adnan Abdu Hassan Ali, an Iraqi, was convicted of wearing a Saddam Hussein T-shirt the day allied forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait. No other charges against him were made public. He told the tribunal the shirt was given to him at the Iraqi school he attended before the invasion and that he only wore it around the house...
...months leading up to the gulf war, Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed al-Mashat was Saddam Hussein's No. 1 apologist in the U.S. He appeared often on American TV, touting Baghdad's line while parrying questions from Ted Koppel and John McLaughlin. Then he vanished. Recalled to Baghdad shortly before the fighting began in mid-January, Mashat stopped first in Vienna, supposedly to seek medical treatment for his wife, and was not heard from again...
Until last week, that is, when authorities in Ottawa disclosed that on March 30 Mashat had arrived in Canada, where he was granted permanent residence as a financially independent retiree. As it turned out, according to British diplomats, Mashat differed privately with Saddam over the gulf crisis and thus never went back to Baghdad. Though he is not technically a political refugee, Mashat's case was expedited because he feared for his safety should he return to Iraq...
...ambassador's welcome in Canada, however, has not been wholehearted. Immigration Minister Bernard Valcourt said he was "furious" that bureaucrats had decided to accept Saddam's ex-defender without consulting government ministers. Complained Svend Robinson of the opposition New Democratic Party: "This makes us look like a dumping ground...
...facts in Iraq, says Lara, is that even without censorship, most citizens remain fearful of speaking to reporters. "Many Iraqis refused to talk to me because I had no government 'minder' with me," she says. Officials were equally reticent, frequently glancing at omnipresent portraits of Saddam Hussein as if seeking approval of their statements. Still, there were flashes of honesty. At a hospital in Basra, Marlowe asked a mother with a dying infant what had happened in the city. "She can't answer a question like that with all these people around," said the government interpreter. "Look at the pain...