Saddam Hussein

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Bombers and gunmen killed more than 110 Shiite Muslim pilgrims observing a religious ritual and wounded more than 250 others in scores of sectarian attacks yesterday that threatened to derail a renewed effort to stabilize Iraq. In the worst incident, two suicide bombers walking among the pilgrims in the southern city of Hilla detonated their explosive belts within two minutes of each other, killing at least 77 and injuring 127, according to local police. Around Baghdad, gunmen, car bombs and roadside bombs killed at least 35 and injured 137 others.

World is better off with Hussein gone Saddam Hussein has been hanged by his former subjects for his enormously evil deeds. And Iraq - and the world - are a far better place ("Executed," Dec. 30). I hope that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria's Bashar Assad learn from this example. Mr. Hussein's crimes were on a world-historical scale, rivaling in brutality, if not sheer numbers, those of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Only the willfully blind choose to ignore such enormous evil.

Only Slobodan Milosevic could look at Saddam Hussein and see a winning role model.Aegon is buying Transamerica and may move its Pyramid from Frisco to the Inner Harbor, if not to the Hague itself.Any moderate GOPeful would beat Gore. None, alas, can be nominated.The trick to saving historic buildings on downtown's west side is to do it before they all fall down.Pub Date: 2/22/99

WASHINGTON -- The United States said yesterday that it had new evidence showing that President Saddam Hussein had spent money to build a sprawling amusement park to entertain his political followers instead of feeding hungry Iraqis.In a report intended to convince other governments to retain tough economic sanctions against Iraq, the State Department said the entertainment complex was detected in aerial photographs."Despite its claims that the people of Iraq are dying due to a lack of food and medicine, Saddam Hussein doesn't hesitate to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the entertainment of Baath Party officials and cadres," said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- In his first debate of the presidential contest, Texas Gov. George W. Bush threatened to use military force, if necessary, to take out weapons of mass destruction from Iraq.The Republican front-runner, who appeared to emerge from the 90-minute encounter unscathed, cautiously defended his qualifications and his policies last night against a steady barrage of criticism from five Republican opponents.Meantime, his leading challenger for the nomination, John McCain, tried to turn aside, with a wisecrack, allegations that he is too hot-tempered to be president.

OF COURSE the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) spied on Iraq. How else could it fulfill its mission?The organization of technical experts from several countries tried valiantly to discover Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and missile delivery systems. Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, threw every obstacle in its path.On its face, Iraq's spying charges were always true. That's why UNSCOM was created by the U.N. Security Council.But the spying charge was never a reason to drop UNSCOM or to end the sanctions that respond to the continued concealment of weapons of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON -- In challenging allied aircraft almost daily over Iraqi no-fly zones, Saddam Hussein may have unwittingly handed the United States a strategy that could lead to his own downfall: Bomb until his military overthrows him.Since the four-day Operation Desert Fox attack on Iraq in December, U.S. and British planes have conducted more than 100 bombing strikes, including eight yesterday, in response to Iraqi provocations.Recently, the allies have expanded the target list to go beyond those that pose immediate threats to aircraft -- such as radar and missile sites -- to attack targets more valuable to Hussein, such as communications facilities and headquarters.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Open the phone book and embark on an expedition into the wondrous world of Brazilian names.A quick search unearths gems: Welfare Almeida, Nostradamus Coelho, Waterloo da Silva, Ben Hur Euzebio and Flavio Cavalcanti Rei da Televisao (King of Television) Nogueira.Let's call one of these people and find out what the heck is going on with these names."My grandfather's name was Moacir, which in the Tupi Guarani indigenous language means `bad omen,' " explains Welfare Almeida, an anesthesiologist.

KING Hussein is being eulogized around the world for his role as an Arab-Israeli peacemaker and international statesman. But the king's real legacy, and what explains the outpouring of grief by his own people, is the admirable way he ran his own backyard. The way he played the roles of governor, mayor and even local Bedouin chief is what really set him apart as an Arab leader.Indeed, as a geopolitician, the king had his shortcomings. He let Nasser and the nationalist euphoria of the Arab street bamboozle him into the 1967 war. He talked himself out of the 1973 war, when he might have actually recaptured part of his lost kingdom from Israel.

"Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem Once and For All," by Scott Ritter. Simon & Schuster. 240 pages. $22.Eight years after it began, an ambitious United Nations scheme to eliminate Saddam Hussein's most dangerous weapons lies in shambles, its inspectors barred by Baghdad and its political support eroded by disclosure of a too-cozy relationship with U.S. intelligence and military planners.Scott Ritter's "Endgame" offers the first insider's account of this failure. It's a sobering story of how a clever, brutal Iraqi regime rebounded from defeat in war to outwit and outflank a U.N. agency, even one supported by a superpower.

As George W. Bush fades from the world stage, many of his detractors are belatedly coming to appreciate that, for all his shortcomings, he has at least "kept us safe." And rightly so. In the aftermath of that terrible September morning in 2001, few believed that the U.S. would go another seven years without an attack. And in ensuring that 9/11 was al-Qaida's last successful strike on the U.S. homeland, Mr. Bush fulfilled the first duty of any commander in chief. But in so fulfilling his duty, he has unwittingly become one of the most consequential leaders in world history.

AMMAN, Jordan - Najim Abid Hajwal has been having a difficult time renewing his passport. He submitted his paperwork at the Iraqi Embassy here but was told days later that he was a wanted man back home in Iraq. It turned out that the Interior Ministry was after someone with a similar name. He submitted a new set of papers to prove his identity but was issued a passport with a wrong name. It's enough to make an Iraqi nostalgic for the good old days. "Under Saddam, a ministry was a ministry," Hajwal says.

A 67-year-old Maryland restaurateur, known by the code name "Adam," pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to spying for the Iraqi government - including Saddam Hussein's regime - since 1989. According to court documents, Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy used his Laurel restaurant to gather information about nearby U.S. agencies and their employees, including where military officers lived. He gave the data to Iraqi Intelligence Service members and officials, who sometimes met at the restaurant.

WASHINGTON - In a sweeping defense of his record, President George W. Bush asserted yesterday that his administration is leaving the Middle East a "freer, more hopeful and more promising place" than when he took office. Bush said his administration is close to success in Iraq, has moved to counter Iran's nuclear program, and has "laid a foundation of trust" between Israelis and Palestinians. "At long last, the Middle East is closing a chapter of darkness and fear, and opening one written in the language of possibility and hope," Bush said in remarks to the Saban Forum in Washington, according to a transcript released by the White House.

Boeing workers end strike after eight weeks SEATTLE : Factories at Boeing Co. were due to start humming again yesterday after Machinists union members voted to end a costly eight-week strike that clipped profits and stalled deliveries by the world's No. 2 commercial airplane maker. Workers were expected to return last night to Boeing's commercial airplane factories, which have been closed since the Sept. 6 walkout. The strike cost an estimated $100 million a day in deferred revenue and production delays on the company's highly anticipated next-generation passenger jet. Machinists union members ended their walkout Saturday by ratifying a new contract with Boeing.

Should the United States have invaded Iraq five years ago? Revisionist history and partisan politics aside, I happen to believe that large elements of the argument to do so made sense at the time. But so what? Neither my belief in the need to confront Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction program, nor the belief of those who felt that under no circumstances should we have set one foot in that country, means a thing. It is what it is. We broke it, and we need to fix it. Highlighting the negative, ignoring most of the positive and using the misery of the war to score cheap debating points have been in vogue for the last few years.

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi parliament passed a bill yesterday to allow some former officials from Saddam Hussein's party to apply for government positions, in the first of the so-called political benchmark measures to pass after months of U.S. pressure for progress. The measure, which is expected to be approved to become law by the presidential council, was described by its backers as opening the door for the reinstatement of thousands of low-level Baath Party members barred from office after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Throughout a career that took him from hardscrabble wildcatter to wealthy oil tycoon, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. hasn't been the type to back down from a fight. So Monday's guilty plea to a federal conspiracy charge by the 83-year-old founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. surprised those familiar with his tenacity. "I am shocked by his decision to plead guilty," said David H. Berg, who represented Wyatt's brother-in-law, Houston clothier Robert T. Sakowitz, when the oilman sued him in the 1980s over some business deals.

During the reign of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman could only be published in London. Fleeing the government's muscular arm in the 1990s, the newspaper's founder, former Hussein aide Saad al-Bazzaz, was forced to run his media operation out of Europe for nearly a decade. But after Mr. Hussein's expulsion in 2003, Mr. al-Bazzaz set up offices in Baghdad, and he has since been busy running what is considered Iraq's most credible Arabic publication. With a daily circulation of more than 75,000, Azzaman is a modern journalistic success story and a publication that has added greater depth to the political debate in Iraq.

ABDEL-RAHMAN AREF, 91 Former Iraqi leader Former Iraqi President Abdel-Rahman Aref, overthrown more than 35 years ago in a coup that brought Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to power, died early yesterday at King Hussein Medical Center in Amman, Jordan, an Iraqi diplomat in Jordan said. Tahseen Alwan Ina, Iraqi charge d'affaires in Amman, had no details on Mr. Aref's health or the circumstances of his death. Mr. Aref had settled in Jordan after leaving Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Hussein in 2003.