"But [Saddam] fired Mr. Hammadi within six months, after the new prime minister spoke up for change and democracy..." What? This is the same Sa`dun Hammadi of the Ba`th Party? There are now some soft and favorable obituaries of Hammadi in the Saudi-funded Arabic press, and in the New York Times it seems. I think that in the New York Times it is probably because Hammadi earned his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin--people in the West always think better of you if you are a native with a PhD from a Western university. Hammadi was the propagandist for the Ba`th all his life, and he was closely associated with the Saddam era from early on. He was the ideologue of the Ba`th under Saddam, and in no way did he speak for "democracy." Hammadi was a central figure in the regime of the Ba`th and in no way can be portrayed as some quiet voice of "moderation" and "democracy". Hammadi very much reminds me of Ribbentrop (who used to like to be called Von Ribbentrop). Both were part of the regimes that they served, and both were weak members of the regime, but both also never wavered in their loyalty to the top leader. They both thought that they were better than the entourage around the leader, but they both never saw a problem in their leader.