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Warof
Nerves

SPECIAL REPORT

Portrait
Of A
Hit Man

Iraq's Saddam Hussein
climbed to power over the
bodies of men he killed
personally or ordered
executed. His style as a head
of state is no less ruthless.

IRA RIFKIN

Special to The Jewish News

28

FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 1990

Center of the conflict: While many in the Arab world praised Saddam Hussein, this London protestor hangs an
effigy of the Iraqi president during a protest near the Kuwait embassy.
UPI Photo

iv

hen he was in his mid-20s,
Iraq's future President-for-
Life, Saddam Hussein, was
a student in Cairo. One
day, so the story goes, he
was in a cafe, listening to other students
debate the merits of a local politician.
"Why argue?" Saddam Hussein is said
to have interjected. "Why don't you just
shoot him?"
That the Iraqi leader is an aggressive
and unpredictable risk-taker has been
made abundantly clear. Equally evident,
as the story underscores, is his penchant
for direct, pragmatic and, if he deems it
necessary, brutal action taken without
regard for human life.
Simply put, Saddam Hussein is not one
who frets over the finer points of diplo-
macy or shared human values.
"He has a totally different value
system based on one word — power,"

former envoy to Iraq Donald Rumsfeld
has said of the Iraqi leader.
But he is also a formidable and cunning
foe who, methodology aside, has turned
Iraq into a disciplined military power,
warned Louis Cantori, a University of
Maryland Baltimore County political sci-
ence professor and Middle East expert
who was in Iraq until just four days prior
to the invasion of Kuwait.
"He is no Noriega and Iraq is not
Panama," cautioned Dr. Cantori.
"Demonizing him does not negate his ef-
fectiveness in achieving what he wants."
Stripped of embellishment, the general-
ly accepted details of the Iraqi dictator's
life are as follows:
He was born in 1937 in the village of
Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad.
He was the son of Sunni Moslem
peasants and before his first birthday he
was an orphan. An uncle, an army officer