Word: tikrit
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conspiracy against Saddam Hussein in the latest attempt to overthrow the Iraqi leader since the end of the Gulf War. Iraqi dissidents said all the suspects are Sunni Muslims -- a group commonly considered to be Hussein's main base of power -- and included several trusted officers from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown. Last week, in possibly another planned attack, a former head of army intelligence claimed that several Republican Guard officers were charged with planning to assassinate Saddam and his two sons. The general, Wafiq al-Samarra'i, told the Arab media that Hussein responded by reorganizing the elite force that...
...could succeed. Last November, the head of Iraqi military intelligence during the Gulf War, Major General Wafiq Samaraii, defected to Kurdistan with a promise that he could deliver an Iraqi division willing to attack Saddam. A brigade would capture the Iraqi leader on March 4 in his hometown of Tikrit, where he was expected to attend a family reunion...
...even reporters were picking up rumors that it was imminent. "If the press knew about the coup, you could be sure Saddam knew," said a U.S. intelligence analyst. He did. The week before the coup attempt, Saddam put his entire military on full alert. He never set foot in Tikrit. Samaraii, it turns out, had overstated the strings he could pull in Baghdad. "Clearly there was a lot of wishful thinking in this operation," admits Walid al-Tamimi, an Iraqi National Congress member in London...
Saddam has already embarked on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, he visited three provincial capitals, Ba'quba, Ramadi and Mosul, as well as his hometown of Tikrit. At each stop, thousands of followers, mostly young people, cheered him, chanting, "Bush, Bush, listen well, we all love Saddam Hussein!" In Mosul the Iraqi President ostentatiously drew a pistol from his holster and fired several shots over the heads of the crowd. The throng went wild, and the footage was shown over and over on Iraqi television. "Tomorrow, if they were given new instructions, they would chant different slogans," says...
Born in 1940 in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, Majid began his career in the Baath Party's internal-security branch, whimsically called the Instrument of Yearning. Its reputation for rough torture made it the most feared organization in Iraq. Grateful for Majid's help in ridding him of Baathist rivals, Saddam made him Minister of Municipalities. But his real job was to be Saddam's No. 1 enforcer...