"The Snake Charmer. The man who stands between Iraq and all-out Communism is a lean, hard-muscled and ascetic professional soldier with a fixed, snaggle-toothed smile. His name Abdul Karim Kassem. On the face of it, Karim Kassem, 44, seems a weak reed on which to rest the free world's hopes. Modest in deportment, moderate in conversation, Kassem is nonetheless inordinately and naively suspicious... Cursed by shyness and a weak, high-pitched voice, he is sadly lacking in the rabble-rousing skills on which most successful Arab politicians rely. Most serious of all, he is totally inexperienced in affairs of state."