For a while last week it seemed impossible to tell who was up and who was down in Iraq. Perhaps the principals themselves were not sure.
Two weeks ago, the Baath Party (TIME, Nov. 22) seemed firmly in control. The country's non-Baathist President, Field Marshal Abdul Salam Aref, seemed a mere figurehead, kept on for his prestige and popularity. Then an internecine conflict erupted between Baath's antiWestern, anti-bourgeois and anti-Aref radical wing and a more conciliatory moderate faction. Rushing in from neighboring Syria, the Baath Par ty's home base, the party...