[lbo-talk] Nicknamania

loupaulsen at attbi.com loupaulsen at attbi.com
Wed Apr 16 14:20:06 PDT 2003


Remember 'chemical Ali'? Remember how the media always talked about how he was 'commonly known in Iraq as chemical Ali'? Were we supposed to really believe this? People walked down the street in Basra: "Hey, there's chemical Ali! YO! CHEMICAL ALI! WAZZUUUP!"

I started wondering if anyone in Iraq had ever referred to the guy as 'chemical Ali' at all. I did a dejanews search and found only one reference to 'chemical Ali' before 1998. However, it was in a kurdish USENET group, so it had some authenticity. My conclusion is that Kurdish forces started calling him that and then this year the usage exploded into the western media.

Today, however, we get this:

_ U.S. special forces raided the Baghdad home of microbiologist Rihab Taha, nicknamed "Dr. Germ," who ran Iraq's secret biological laboratory. Troops brought out boxes of documents and three men with their hands raised. Taha's whereabouts weren't immediately known.

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Now, it's just going too far:

DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer

She is called "Dr. Germ," and he is known as the "Missile Man."

After meeting at a New York seminar hosted by U.N. weapons inspectors in the early 1990s, Dr. Rihab Taha and Amer Rashid became the power couple of Iraq (news - web sites)'s clandestine weapons program.

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Should we fight fire with fire? What would you like to call Bush? Rumsfeld? Tommy Franks?

LP



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