This is from the pen of Pentagon propagandist/New York Times correspondent John Burns on the career of Iraqi puppet prime minister/car bomber/Saddam's former assassin/embezzler-in-Yemen: "Due process was not always his métier, as Iraqis who knew him as a young medical student on the Baghdad University campus in the 1970's recall. Then, these people say, Dr. Allawi, who qualified as a neurosurgeon, was a zealot for Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party, a man who carried a gun, threatened fellow students and was feared as a regime enforcer. His reputation as a hard man was one reason, perhaps the main one, he became a protégé in exile of the Central Intelligence Agency, and then the favored American candidate for prime minister of the interim government appointed in the spring, shortly before Iraq regained sovereignty on June 28."