HW 31: Responding to Riverbend

I would like to learn more about Ba'athists. In reading Baghdad Burning by Riverbend I came across this term on page 45 and it made me curious. What I have found out is that the Ba'athists are insurgents led by the former Saddam Hussein. What that has to do with the book is Riverbend is talking about an interview with Al-Jazeera and how he says in the interview that he feels the extremists, loyalists, terrorists, Ba'athists, and people from neighboring countries were responsible for the assasination of Al-Hakim. That made me question what Ba'athists were because I have heard the term before but didn't know what it meant. I found an article talking about Ba'athists but there isn't anything on wikipedia about them. the link is http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/32911/. It is interesting that Scott Ridder of Alternet talks about what the Ba'athists have done in Iraq for example, "The chaos and anarchy that dominates the Iraqi domestic scene today is a direct result of the Canal Hotel bombing, and represents the underlying strategy of the Ba'athist insurgents, which is to create the conditions within Iraq where the Iraqi people have lost faith in the American occupier and their proxy Iraqi government to bring about peace and stability" (1).

Ridder, Scott. Alternet. 2006. 6 Mar.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/32911/

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. New York, NY: First Feminist Press, 2005