Arrrgh! Guinastasia is aping George Bush I in mispronouncing Saddam’s name. It is a CIA plot!*
From a CBC website:
*"Arab speakers say the accent should be on the second syllable (Sa-DAM) and not on the first (SAD-am). Some also point out that “dam” shouldn’t sound like “damn” but rather like “alm” – which, as William Safire notes, means that what we stress should be pretty close to “bomb.”
There is also a theory among critics that the White House has gone out of its way to mispronounce the name. They complain that one version, “SOD-um,” is intended to conjure up the biblical city of ill fame. They also claim that another version, “SAD-um,” is part of a conspiracy to twist the meaning in Arabic. “SAD-um” was the popular choice of George W. Bush’s father during the early 1990s. Putting the accent on the first syllable, scholars argue, turns “one who confronts” into “barefoot beggar.”*
*The claim that the CIA instructed George Bush the Elder to misprounce Saddam’s name as “Sodom” has made the rounds among certain Muslim conspiracy theorists.