"The duty of the government is to protect the powerless from the powerful," wrote Babylonian King Hammurabi in 1792 B.C.

"I've really adopted this theme," said Ramzi Dalloo, chairman of the Chaldean (Christian Iraqi) Democratic Caucus. "That sums up how I live."

As a teenager in Baghdad, Dalloo was arrested and spent 90 days in jail for taking part in a demonstration to support the labor movement. Upon his release from prison, he was surprised to learn that his family and friends did not share his passion for political revolt against a tyrannical government. They were content living obediently and subserviently to the political regime then in power. He was denounced for his political involvement and in subsequent years, as his thirst for humanitarianism contributed to his arrest on three other occasions, he came to learn that the absence of Chaldeans in Iraqi politics was a result of fear, not apathy.

Dalloo was in Iraq during the monarchy. In 1920, Britain imposed a Hashimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Shiites and Kurds fought for independence. Inspired by Nasser, officers from the Nineteenth Brigade known as "Free Officers," under the leadership of Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif overthrew the Hashimite monarchy on July 14, 1958.

Dalloo had been one of the people out in the street supporting the revolution. "It was a watershed moment for me," he said. "To liberate the country was a good thing. Of course, I was fifteen years old and na