Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later its Iraqi regional branch. Ideologically, he espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, while the policies and political ideas he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.
Fedayeen Saddam was a paramilitary militia Fedayeen organization intensely loyal to the Ba'athist Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. The name was chosen to mean "Saddam's Men of Sacrifice". At its height, the group had 30,000–40,000 members. The Fedayeen operated completely outside the law, above and outside political and legal structures.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the invasion in 2003. Its final report, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq WMD, was submitted to Congress and the president in 2004. It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organized by the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to hunt for the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD. The report acknowledged that only small stockpiles of chemical WMDs were found, the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat.
Saddam Hussein, the deposed president of Iraq, was captured by the United States military in the town of Ad-Dawr, Iraq on 13 December 2003. Codenamed Operation Red Dawn, this military operation was named after the 1984 American film Red Dawn.
Live from Baghdad is a 2002 American television war drama film directed by Mick Jackson and co-written by Robert Wiener, based on Wiener's book of the same title. The film premiered on HBO on December 7, 2002, during the prelude stage of the Iraq War.
Eason Jordan is an executive and entrepreneur who serves as the Rockefeller Foundation's Senior Vice President for Connected Leaders.
The Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were based on false claims by the United States government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. U.S. president George W. Bush used it as a main reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
The Voice of Iraq is a privately owned radio station in Iraq that has broadcast since August 27, 2003. It broadcasts in Arabic, Iraqi Turkish and English on 1179 kHz medium wave in Baghdad and nearby towns including Ba'qubah and Fallujah to an area with 12 million inhabitants. Voice of Iraq is supervised by the International Agency for Free Media, which is a media institution that was active abroad during the Saddam Hussein regime and covered Iraqi news via the Internet.
The Central Bank of Iraq is a monetary authority established in 1947, shortly after the end of the British occupation of Iraq. The CBI's primary objectives are to ensure domestic price stability and foster a stable competitive market based financial system.
Kanan Makiya is an Iraqi-American academic and professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He gained international attention with Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-selling book after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and with Cruelty and Silence (1991), a critique of the Arab intelligentsia. In 2003, Makiya lobbied the U.S. government to invade Iraq and oust Hussein.
In the Shadow of the Palms (2005) is a documentary produced and directed by the Australian filmmaker Wayne Coles-Janess. He filmed it in Iraq prior to, during and after the fall of Saddam Hussein after the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the U.S. An Arab-language film, it documents the changes in Iraqi society and the lives of ordinary Iraqis by focusing on a cross-section of individuals.
The cinema of Iraq went through a downturn under Saddam Hussein's regime. The development of film and film-going in Iraq reflects the drastic historical shifts that Iraq has experienced in the 20th century. The Iraq War which began in 2003 had an influence on many films being produced.
Acrassicauda is an Iraqi thrash metal band formed in 2001 in Baghdad and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. It is often credited as the first heavy metal group to emerge from Iraq. The original band consisted of four members and played concerts during the rule of Saddam Hussein. They became well known outside of the local Iraqi metal scene after a Vice magazine profile, and received even greater coverage with a feature-length documentary about the band and its troubles in Iraq called Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Their first album was released in 2010.
Sinan Antoon, is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator. He has been described as "one of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world." Alberto Manguel described him as "one of the great fiction writers of our time.” He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
House of Saddam is a 2008 British docudrama television miniseries that charted the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein. A co-production between BBC Television and HBO Films, the series was first broadcast on BBC Two in four parts between 30 July and 20 August 2008.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a 2007 rockumentary film following filmmakers Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi as they track down the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda amidst the Iraq War.
Jadaliyya ("dialectic") is an independent ezine founded in 2010 by the Arab Studies Institute (ASI) to cover the Arab World and the broader Middle East. It publishes articles in Arabic, French, English and Turkish, and is run primarily on a volunteer basis by an editorial team, and an expanding pool of contributors that includes academics, journalists, activists and artists.
Nabeel Yasin is an Iraqi poet, journalist and political activist.
The 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge, also called the Comrades Massacre, was a public purge of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party orchestrated on 22 July 1979 by then-president Saddam Hussein six days after his arrival to the presidency of the Iraqi Republic on 16 July 1979.
