Word: saddams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When the U.S. destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, parties based in the Shi'ite majority - brutally suppressed for decades - were quick to stake their claim to the shape country's future. They embraced the American promise of democracy and, ordered to vote by their most respected spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, they turned out in their millions at the polling booths to elect the Arab-world's first Shi'ite government. And that inspired Shi'ites across the region to clamor for more rights and influence, challenging centuries-old arrangements that had kept them...
...sectarian conflict in Iraq has implications for the whole Middle East. Long before Americans recognized sectarianism as a problem it was already shaping attitudes beyond Iraq's borders. Not long after Saddam fell from power, King Abdullah of Jordan warned of an emerging Shi'ite crescent stretching from Beirut to Tehran - emerging Shi'ite power and Sunni reaction to it was on everyone's mind in the region...
...Powell remains a hugely controversial figure in the events of the last five years; his U.N. testimony about Saddam Hussein's WMD program will be remembered by historians as a tragic snow job - with Powell, perhaps, among those who was snowed most. But whatever one makes of him as an intelligence analyst, his judgment as a veteran of ground warfare looks increasingly wise. Powell's comments renew the debate, raging since the start of the Iraqi war, between those, like Powell, who believe wars are best fought with overwhelming and punishing force, and those who thought that the war would...
...terrorist organizations. The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is also on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations, although much to Tehran's chagrin, the U.S. did not hand over the group's fighters when it took control of their main base in Iraq after the fall of Saddam...
...founded in 1965 as a leftist-religious faction opposing the Shah's regime. But it was no less opposed to the Islamist regime that arrived with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, which executed thousands of the group's supporters. By the mid-1980s, the group had cozied up to Saddam Hussein, who provided them with funds and a compound, Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. The U.S. government has accused the group of helping Saddam brutally put down a Kurdish rebellion in the early 1990s, and of launching numerous attacks inside Iran...