Word: thugs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What are Arabs to do with Saddam Hussein? What are they to think if they see the devil in the hero, the thug tricked up as a Pan-Arabist dreamer? In considering Saddam, many Arabs are sorting out complexities in themselves. They are formulating an attitude toward their collective past and future, toward the Arabs' place in the world. The exercise does not leave them entirely happy...
...promote reform, especially since the aid is being delivered to central authorities instead of the individual republics. Gorbachev has come under fire for balking at truly radical market solutions, settling for half measures. Critics say he is undermining his commitment to private enterprise by trying to root out the thug-infested black market when he should be encouraging its entrepreneurial spirit...
...biggest trouble, however, is that the U.S. is obliged to beam conflicting messages to different audiences: Saddam, America's allies and its own public. Saddam, in Washington's analysis, is a paranoid thug to whom force is everything. To him the message can only be that he must pull out of Kuwait because the only alternative is the destruction of his power and perhaps his life. But the allies are reluctant to see the Middle East go up in flames, and so are the Americans whose sons, husbands and brothers -- or daughters, wives and sisters -- might be killed. The message...
Like those forebears, Saddam is by no means crazy. Rather, he is a man willing to do almost anything to get what he wants -- and he wants to dominate the Middle East much as Nebuchadnezzar once did. "He is an extremely shrewd, cold-blooded, clever thug," says a senior British diplomat who has dealt with him. "Human life means nothing to him." He plays the complex game of Middle East politics by the bareknuckle rules of the region. Says another diplomat: "He does what he thinks is expedient. He is not driven by ideology or whim. He coldly calculates every...
...gunpoint and gave her a blunt message for her employer, writer Jorge Castaneda, one of the fiercest critics of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's government: Lay off or die. Three days later, after the young secretary identified one of her menacers as a former police agent, a fifth thug threatened her life as well...