What exactly was the impetus for a front-page, feature story whose essential purpose is to remind us that Saddam was a really bad guy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49117-2003Oct31.html
Peter Feith, who has the byline on this story proclaims....
The violent crackdown on student dissent at the school in the fall of 1981 was one of the most callous acts of the Hussein government. In the first years of Hussein's rule, it became a cautionary tale in the overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya, a community where almost everyone knows someone who was imprisoned or executed. The high school purge established the sheer ruthlessness of a state that would brook no opposition, especially in the education system, where Hussein's personality cult and pledges of loyalty to the Baath Party infused the curriculum.
I'm frankly pretty suspicious of such a one-dimensional portrayal of Saddam's acknowledged baddiness, in the wake of BushCo's recent renewed public relations assault on war critics.
Funny how this article never mentions that it was during exactly this same period that Saddam was establishing himself as a brutal, ruthless and sadistic tyrant, that the Reagan White House was, literally, embracing and legitimizing his regime. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm
(nb, sorry for the lack of linking sophistication, but the A tags here in the diaries don't seem to be working correctly.)