Word: strongman
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...South Koreans a "democratic welfare state," complete with civil rights, press freedom and carefully defined powers of the presidency- at least on paper. The referendum was the first test of Chun's popularity since he took power last December, shortly after the assassination of President Park Chung Hee. Strongman Chun, a former general, and his U.S.-educated Prime Minister, Nam Duck Woo, worked hard to ensure a heavy voter turnout. Roving "enlightenment teams" explained details of the new constitution at more than 3,600 local meetings. The President would be limited to a single seven-year term, for example...
There is piquant historical irony in the burgeoning partnership between Iraqi Strongman Saddam Hussein and Jordan's King Hussein. The King's cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq, was slaughtered by the Iraqi military in 1958. Hafez Assad's Syria has negotiated a phony "merger" with Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, even though Gaddafi until recently was suspected of financing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, an underground organization dedicated to the assassination of Assad's fellow Alawites, members of a minority Muslim sect that controls the Damascus regime, and in 1976 Gaddafi sent his guerrillas into Lebanon to fight alongside Palestinians...
...surprise attack on Iran nearly a month ago. Saddam Hussein had hoped that the Khomeini regime would crumble under the first attacks. Now he needs to turn the stalemate into a clear-cut victory, or at least to extricate himself with some face-saving diplomatic fallback. Otherwise, Iraq's strongman runs the risk of falling victim to the same kind of coup that he engineered against a number of his former comrades and superiors in the on-again, off-again bloodbath of Iraqi politics...
...much bravado as the fact that there have been few Iranian bombing raids in which civilians have been hit. Even in the famed Shi'ite Muslim Al Kadhimain mosque, where posters of Ayatullah Khomeini once hung during religious festivals, there is little evidence of special security precautions. Strongman Saddam Hussein's government, dominated by Sunni Muslims, is apparently confident that the Iranians will not be able to spark uprisings among their Shi'ite Muslim brethren in Iraq, who make up more than half the population...
JORDAN, with the presumed consent of its ally Saudi Arabia, openly endorsed the Iraqi cause with offers of military aid, including some forces from its well-trained, U.S.-equipped 60,000-man army. King Hussein, who met in Baghdad last week with Iraqi Strongman Saddam Hussein, also organized truck convoys to carry Soviet and East bloc military supplies from the Jordanian port of Aqaba; its harbor was crowded with freighters waiting to unload. Western diplomats speculated that the Saudis, Jordanians and Iraqis had formed a new conservative Arab alliance that was aimed at checking the Iranian brand of revolutionary Islam...