Word: baathist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nostalgically back to the dictatorship, pointing out that for all the terrors Saddam visited upon his people, at least there were no suicide bombers and death squads roaming the streets. But once his trial began, even his most ardent followers conceded he would never return to power. The Sunni Baathist insurgents have long since stopped fighting for him. Many have recast themselves as the "nationalist resistance," or worse, mujahedin. Many others have abandoned Baathism for the more poisonous jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda...
...intervene in the case, which the Bush Administration is determined not to do. U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq abolished the death penalty after Saddam's fall in 2003, out of fear that it could be too easily abused by Iraqis out to settle scores with their former Baathist tormentors. But capital punishment returned with the ratification of a new constitution in 2005. Whatever the Administration's true feelings about the wisdom of executing Saddam in such a heated environment, the U.S. appears prepared to allow the Iraqis to do as they please. When the hanging happens, it will no doubt...
...Saddam joined the pan-Arab nationalist Baath Party in 1957. Two years later, at the age of 22, Saddam was part of a Baathist plot to assassinate General Abdul Karim Kassem, who had overthrown the monarchy of King Faisal II a year before. Saddam escaped Iraq with a gunshot wound in the leg and spent the next six years in exile in Cairo where he had contacts with the CIA. The American spy agency was backing the Baathists at the time...
...nationalization of Iraq's oil resources, seizing petroleum rights from international companies. He also was instrumental in building up the Baath Party's all-pervasive network of informants to ensure loyalty and warn of coup plots. However, in 1979, when Al-Bakr proposed a federation with the neighboring Baathist regime of Syria, an agreement in which Syrian President Hafez Assad would become the heir apparent to a united Syria-Iraqi Baathist republic, Saddam acted. Al-Bakr was thrust out of office and Saddam assumed the presidency. In a single day, he had 68 Baath Party members arrested for disloyalty...
...second Gulf War drove Saddam from Baghdad and power and into the spider hole. In the interim, his Baathist apparatus and military were dismantled. His family dispersed. His heirs, the despicable Uday and Qusay, were killed while fugitives in Iraq. Two years after his arrest, Saddam was put on trial for war crimes before the newly re-constituted Iraqi High Tribunal. In November he was convicted of genocide for ordering the executions of 148 men and boys in response to a 1982 assassination attempt in the town of Dujail. The Dujail trial introduced witnesses and an extensive document trail that...