
Saddām Hussein ʻAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrīt, spelled Husayn or Hussain; Arabic language صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي; born April 28, 1937 ) was President of Iraq from 1979 until 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and socialism, Saddam (''see regarding names'') played a key role in the bloodless 1968 coup d'état that brought the party to power. As vice president under the frail and elderly Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between government departments and the armed forces--at a time when many organizations were considered capable of overthrowing the government--by forging a repressive security apparatus. Meanwhile, Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace in the 1970s. As president, he developed a pervasive personality cult, ran an authoritarian government, and maintained power through the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the first Persian Gulf War (1991), which both corresponded with a sharp decline in standard of living and the human rights situation. Saddam's government repressed movements that it deemed threatened his rule, especially ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy such as the Kurdish and Shiite populations. While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Arabs for standing up to the West and for his staunch support for the Palestinians, the United States and other members of the international community continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Saddam was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 Iraq War. Captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003, he will stand trial under the Iraq Special Tribunal, established by the Iraq Interim Government. ==Youth== Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit district of Iraq, to a family of sheep-herders. His mother named her newborn "Saddam," which in Arabic means "one who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterwards, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She attempted both to abortion Saddam and kill herself and refused to care for her new child when he was born. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam Hussein harshly after his return. He was abusive and forced the young boy to steal chickens and sheep for resale. At the age of ten, he fled the family to return to live with his uncle, who was a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his most influential and powerful advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, especially the lesson that he should never back down from his enemies, no matter how superior their numbers or capabilities. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalism secondary school in Baghdad. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arabism Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The stranglehold of the old elites (the conservative monarchism, established families, and merchants) was breaking down in Iraq. Moreover, the populist pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence the young Ba'athist, even up to the present day. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed the wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the fifties and sixties, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser challenged the United Kingdom and France, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically. ==Rise in the Ba'ath party== A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, ''in absentia''. In exile he attended the Cairo University School of Law. Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new government was ousted quickly, within seven to eight months torn by rife factionalism. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party. According to many biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, namely party unity and the ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability. In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power under General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Tikriti and a relative of Saddam. The Ba'ath's ruling clique named Saddam vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolution Command Council and vice president of Iraq. ==Consolidation of power== [[Image:AlBakr.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Saddam Hussein talking with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr]] In 1976 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government, and was the ''de facto'' ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. By the late 1970s, Saddam had emerged as the undisputed ''de facto'' leader of Iraq. ===Saddam's consolidation of power and the modernization of Iraq=== Saddam consolidated power in a nation riddled with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic fault lines: Sunni Islam versus Shi'a Islam, Arab versus Kurds, tribe versus merchant, nomad versus peasant. Stable rule in a country torn by political factionalism and conflict required the improvement of living standards. Saddam moved up the ranks in the new government by aiding attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party and taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following. Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy along with the creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it. Ever concerned with broadening his base of support among the diverse elements of Iraqi society and mobilizing mass support, he closely followed the administration of state welfare and development programs. At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On June 1, 1972, Saddam Hussein led the process of expropriating Western oil companies, which had had a monopoly on the country's oil. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and Saddam was able to pursue an all the more ambitious agenda through skyrocketing oil revenues. Within a period of just several years, the state provided some social services to Iraqi people unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. Saddam initiated and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). [http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/saddam_hussein.html] [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/war/player1.html] In order to diversify the oil-dependent economy, Saddam oversaw and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and development of other industries to diversify the oil-dependent economy. The campaign effected a comprehensive revolution in energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, including many communities in the countryside and far outlying areas. Before the early 1970s, the majority of the population resided in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised; and peasants accounted for roughly two thirds of the populace. This number would decrease dramatically, though, during the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Iraq in the 1970s, which was propelled by Saddam's channeling of oil revenues into the rapidly growing Iraqi industrial sector and the new Ba'athist welfare programs. Nevertheless, Saddam focused intensely on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athist government in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the Iraqi countryside, the mechanization of agriculture on a large scale, and the distribution of land to farmers. He broke up the large holdings of the landowners and gave land to peasant farmers. The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed in accordance with the labors of the individual peasant and the unskilled were trained. The government's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agriculture development in 1974–1975, a policy that Saddam largely spearheaded. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standards of the broad strata of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels for which Saddam had hoped. By focusing on the implementation role (often to the point of micromanaging), Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, thus widening his original popular base of support while co-opting new sectors of the Iraqi population. Part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics, expanding government services forged patron–client ties between Saddam and his support base among the working class and the peasantry and within the party and the government bureaucracy. Saddam's ruthless organizational prowess was credited with Iraq's rapid pace of development in the 1970s; development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million persons from other Arab countries and Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor. ===Succession=== In 1979 President al-Bakr began to make treaties with Syria, also under Ba'athist leadership, that would lead to unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Before this could happen, however, the ailing al-Bakr resigned on July 16, 1979. Saddam formally assumed the presidency. Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found spies and conspirators within the Ba'ath Party and read out the names of members who he thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one to face a firing squad. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. ==Saddam Hussein as a secular leader== Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the model of Nasser. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims. Domestic conflict impeded Saddam's modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's government rested on the support of the 20 percent minority of largely working-class, peasant, and petite bourgeoisie Sunni Islam, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's reliance on them as administrators. The Shi'a Islam majority were long a source of opposition to the government due to its secular policies, and the Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Sh'ia Islamism influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabizing tendencies. To maintain his regime against sources of opposition, the core of Saddam's government was made up of a retinue of close relatives and members of his Tikriti tribe. In dealing with Shiites, Kurds, Communists, and other likely regime opponents, the government tended either to provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to take repressive measures against them. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. Commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate opponents of Saddam Hussein. [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query] Saddam justified Iraqi patriotism by claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as the ancient cradle of civilization Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq. As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as on Iraqi currency. Saddam's personality cult reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant (which he essentially wore during his childhood), and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a devout Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca; at other times, he would be shown wearing a Western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle over his head. ==Foreign affairs== [[image:Chiracsaddam.jpg|frame|Saddam Hussein meeting with Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister of France, during a state visit to Paris in 1976]] In foreign affairs, Saddam sought to have Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. Iraq signed an aid pact with the Soviet Union in 1972, and arms were sent along with several thousand advisers. However, the 1978 executions of Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union, which took on a more Western orientation from then until the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979). In 1975 he negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French Osiraq, after the Egyptian God of the dead. It was destroyed by an Israeli air strike shortly before it became capable of producing weapons grade nuclear material. After Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi withdrew support for the Kurds, who suffered a total defeat. Nearly from its founding as a modern state in 1920, Iraq has had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. Saddam did negotiate an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy, but the agreement broke down. The result was brutal fighting between the government and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate. ===The Iran–Iraq War=== In 1979 Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the History of Iran#Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ruhollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule—were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population. There had also been bitter enmity between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, took up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following. Under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978. After the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini perhaps regarded toppling Saddam's government as a goal second only to consolidating power in Iran. After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. Iraq and Iran entered into open warfare on September 22, 1980. The pretext for hostilities with Iran was this territorial dispute, but the war was more likely an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansion of radical Iranian-style revolution. [[Image:Donald_saddam.jpg|frame|left|Saddam Hussein meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, at the time Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, during a visit to Baghdad, Iraq in 1983. Video frame capture, see the [http://www.misc-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/nsa_archive_media.html complete video] ]] In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Iran's oil-rich, Arab-populated province of Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human-wave attacks by Iran. By 1982 Iraq was looking for ways to end the war. Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive war of attrition of the twentieth century, with atrocities committed on both sides. During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists. Evidence has shown that many of these chemical weapons, along with Iraq's nuclear program, were in conjuction with the help of Germany. ([http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html]) On March 16, 1988 Iraqi troops, attempting to crush a Kurdish uprising in the Al-Anfal Campaign, Halabja poison gas attack with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents, perhaps killing around five thousand people, mostly civilians. Dissenting opinions dispute the numbers and have said the incident was actually a battle in the Iran–Iraq war where chemical weapons were used on both sides and a significant portion of the fatalities were caused by the Iranian weapons. Whether or not Iran had used chemical weapons in that particular battle remains unclear. Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support. Iraq successfully gained the support of the United States of America (Ronald Reagan) and took supply of chemical weapons from them [http://counterpunch.org/dixon06172004.html]. The Iranians, hoping to bring down Saddam's secular government and instigate a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq, refused a cease-fire until 1988. The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties. Perhaps upwards of 1.7 million died on both sides. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins. Iraq was also stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq into its client state, embarrassing a strongman who had sought to define and dominate Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction. ===Tensions with Kuwait=== The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam saw his war with Iran as having spared Kuwait from the imminent threat of Iranian domination. Since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Persian Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, he argued, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Saddam urged the Kuwaits to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but the Kuwaitis refused. Also to raise money for postwar reconstruction, Saddam pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices by cutting back oil production. Kuwait refused to cut production. In addition to refusing the request, Kuwait spearheaded the opposition in OPEC to the cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt. Meanwhile, Saddam showed disdain for the Kuwait-Iraq boundary line (actually imposed on Iraq by British imperial officials in 1922) because it cut Iraq off from the sea. One of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic divides was the belief that Kuwait had no right to even exist in the first place. For at least half a century, Iraqi nationalists were espousing emphatically the belief that Kuwait was historically an integral part of Iraq, and that Kuwait had only come into being through the maneuverings of British imperialism. The colossal extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves also intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of a mere 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; as an article of comparison, Saudi Arabia holds 25 percent. The Kuwaiti monarchy further angered Saddam by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered to be within its disputed border with Kuwait. Given that at the time Iraq was not regarded as a pariah state, Saddam was able to complain about the slant drilling to the U.S. State Department. Although this had continued for years, Saddam now needed oil money to stem a looming economic crisis. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq–Kuwait border. As Iraq–Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Ronald Reagan gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, 1990, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that while George H. W. Bush and James Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraq–Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Later, Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait. Although no reliable first-hand information on Saddam's appraisal of the situation exists, we can surmise from the prewar standpoint of the Iraqi leader and his interests and the conflicting prewar signals from Washington that the invasion was likely born out of Iraq's postwar debt problem and faltering attempts to gain the resources needed for postwar reconstruction, rebuild the devastated Iraqi economy, and stabilize the domestic political situation. ==The Persian Gulf War== [[Image:SaddamandCuellar.jpg.jpg|200px|thumb|With hours remaining before the war, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar met with Saddam Hussein to discuss the Security Council timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Kuwait.]] On August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed Kuwait, thus sparking an international crisis. The annexation of Kuwait gave Iraq, with its own substantial oil fields, control of twenty percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. The U.S. provided assistance to Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's seizure of the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August of 1990 the United States led a United Nations coalition that drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991. U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had had the most friendly relations with the Soviets. On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, are extremely concerned with stability in this region. The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's Crude oil#Pricing, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake; Kuwait controls approximately ten percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. [http://www.kuwait-info.org/Country_Profile/economy.html] President Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with the tough List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally of the U.S. during the Reagan administration, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time. Britain had a much closer historical relationship with Kuwait than did the U.S., dating back to British colonialism in the region. The country also benefitted from billions of dollars in Kuwaiti investment. Cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable. U.S. officials feared Iraqi retaliation against oil-rich Saudi Arabia, since the 1940s a close ally of Washington, for the Saudis' opposition to the invasion of Kuwait. Accordingly, the US and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including countries as diverse as Egypt, Syria and Czechoslovakia, deployed massive amounts of troops along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East. During the period of negotiations and threats following the invasion, Saddam focused renewed attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to withdraw his forces from Kuwait if Israel would relinquish the occupied territories in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S. and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians. The allies ultimately rejected any connection between the Kuwait crisis and Palestinian issues. Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. With unanimous backing from the Security Council, a U.S.-led coalition launched round-the-clock missile and aerial attacks on Iraq, beginning January 16, 1991. Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. A ground force comprised largely of US and British armored and infantry divisions ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February 1991 and occupied the southern portion of Iraq as far as the Euphrates. On March 6, 1991, referring to the conflict, Bush announced: "What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law." In the end, the over-manned and under-equipped Iraqi army proved unable to compete on the battlefield with the highly mobile coalition land forces and their overpowering air support. Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and casualties were estimated at approximately 20,000 according to U.S. data, with other sources pinning the number as high as 100,000. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to scrap all poison gas and germ weapons and allow UN observers to inspect the sites. UN trade sanctions would remain in effect until Iraq complied with all terms. ===Postwar aftermath=== Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the resulting postwar devastation, laid the groundwork for new rebellions within the country. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's government. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of the Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed. The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions beyond enforcing the Iraqi_no-fly_zones. U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi'ite revolution. Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or militarily from the Persian Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against America. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world. Saddam increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality, rape and prostitution, and the ritual phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the national flag. ==1991-2003== Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. launched a missile attack aimed at Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad June 26, 1993, citing evidence of repeated Iraqi violations of the Iraqi_no-fly_zones imposed after the Gulf War and for incursions into Kuwait. Some speculated that it was in retaliation for Iraq's alleged sponsorship of a plot to kill former President George H. W. Bush. The UN sanctions placed upon Iraq when it invaded Kuwait were not lifted, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, and humanitarian aid ameliorated the humanitarian crisis. UN organizations (such as UNICEF and the WHO) have estimated between 500,000 and 1.2 million deaths were caused by the sanctions, mostly in the under-5 age group [http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~progress/pamp_ed3.html]. Skeptics have estimated that only 350,000 excess deaths occurred between 1991 and 2000 [http://www.alternet.org/story/11933], and that many deaths were actually due to the bombing of Iraqi infrastructure. On December 9, 1996 the United Nations allowed Saddam's government to begin selling limited amounts of oil for food and medicine. Limited amounts of income from the United Nations started flowing into Iraq through the UN Oil for Food program. U.S. officials continued to accuse Saddam Hussein of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, refusing to give out adequate information on these weapons, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions and "no-fly zones." Isolated military strikes by U.S. and British forces continued on Iraq sporadically, the largest being Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Charges of Iraqi impediment to UN inspection of sites thought to contain illegal weapons was claimed as the reason for crises between 1997 and 1998, culminating in intensive U.S. and British missile strikes on Iraq, December 16-December 19, 1998. After two years of intermittent activity, U.S. and British warplanes struck harder at sites near Baghdad in February, 2001. Saddam's support base of Tikriti tribesmen, family members, and other supporters was divided after the war, and in the following years, contributing to the government's increasingly repressive and arbitrary nature. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam's sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. They likely had a leading hand when, in August 1995, two of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law (Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel), who held high positions in the Iraqi military, defected to Jordan. Both were killed after returning to Iraq the following February. Iraqi co-operation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent through much of the 1990s, and access to inspectors was ultimately blocked in 1998. It is speculated that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with, rather than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials. ==2003 invasion of Iraq== [[Image:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg|frame|left|On April 4, satellite channels worldwide broadcast footage of the besieged Iraqi leader touring the streets of his bombed capital. Smoke was emanating from oil fires in the distance. As U.S.-led ground troops were marching toward the capital, a smiling Saddam Hussein greeted cheering, chanting crowds in the streets of Baghdad.]] Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally. Bush's successor, U.S. President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), maintained sanctions and made occasional air strikes in the "Iraqi no-fly zones" or other restrictions, in the hope that Saddam would be overthrown by his many political enemies. The domestic political equation changed in the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, which bolstered the influence of the neoconservatism (United States) faction in the presidential administration and throughout Washington. In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush) spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government. Bush claimed, "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade." "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror," said Bush. (No evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to have been found.) As the war was looming on February 24, 2003, Saddam Hussein talked with CBS News anchor Dan Rather for more than three hours—his first interview with a U.S. reporter in over a decade. CBS aired the taped interview later that week. The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both narrowly failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April, Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on April 9, Saddam was nowhere to be found. ===Pursuit and capture=== ==== Pursuit ==== Saddam Hussein's whereabouts remained in question during the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting of the war. Various sightings of Saddam Hussein were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain. Saddam Hussein was placed at the top of the "U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis," and many of the other leaders of the Iraqi government were arrested, but extensive efforts to find him had little effect. His sons and political heirs, Uday Hussein and Qusai Hussein, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant. ==== Capture ==== On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, shortly afterwards, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, formally announced the capture of Saddam Hussein by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" He was captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. [http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.irq.saddam.operation/] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody. Some reported that Saddam Hussein had actually been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and then drugged before being placed in the spider hole to be found by American troops. [http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2003/12/saddam_captured.html] Saddam Hussein was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative." Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial have not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler." Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation. In March 2005 a former U.S. Marine who reportedly took part in the operation that apprehended Saddam Hussein alleged that the capture of Saddam Hussein was fictionalized by the U.S. military to make it look like he was found in a hole. The Marine further alleged that Saddam Hussein was actually found in a house and fired at the Marines with a pistol. [http://www.wokr13.tv/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=422B960A-26BA-4891-9E60-21C8818788D4] Saddam's lawyer, Khalil al-Duleimi, claims that Saddam also disagrees with the official U.S. explanation of his capture. [http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=5&u=/nm/20050427/ts_nm/iraq_saddam_dc] Some dispute the ex-Marine's allegations. [http://theneocon.blogspot.com/2005/03/ex-marine-alleges-saddam-story-was.html]. ==Trial== [[Image:TrialSaddam.jpg|thumb|220px|left|Saddam Hussein during his first appearance before the Iraqi Special Tribunal]] On June 30, 2004, Saddam Hussein (held in custody by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Baghdad), along with 11 senior Ba'athist officials, were handed over legally (though not physically, as there is at present no adequate Iraqi prison to hold them) to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Particular attention will be paid to his activities in violent campaigns against the Kurds in the north during the Iran-Iraq War, and against the Shiites in the south in 1991 and 1999 to put down revolts. The first legal hearing in Saddam's case was held before the Iraqi Special Tribunal on July 1, 2004. Broadcast later on Arabic and Western television networks, it was his first appearance in footage aired around the world since his capture by U.S. forces the previous December. The 67-year-old deposed Iraqi leader appeared surprisingly confident and defiant throughout the 26-minute hearing. Alternating between listening to and gesturing at the judge, Saddam questioned the legitimacy of the tribunal set up to try him. He called the court as a "play aimed at Bush's chances of winning the U.S. presidential election, 2004." He emphatically rejected charges against him. "This is all theatre. The real criminal is Bush," he stated. When asked by the judge to identify himself in his first appearance before an Iraqi judge, he answered, "I am Saddam Hussein al-Majid, the President of the Republic of Iraq." "I am still the president of the republic and the occupation cannot take that away," Saddam declared. Also during the arraignment, Saddam defended Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and referred to Kuwait's rulers as "dogs," which led to an admonishment from the judge for using coarse language in court (dogs are widely considered to be unclean animals in the Arab world). Later on July 1, Kuwait's information minister Abul-Hassan said crude language was "expected" of Saddam. "This is how he was raised," said the minister. [http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118085] Unlike the conservative monarchs in the area, which rule every other Arab nation in the Persian Gulf region, Saddam Hussein was born into a hard-scrabble, landless peasant family. Although no attorneys for Saddam were present at the July 1 hearing, his first wife, Sajida Talfah, has hired a multinational legal team of over 20 attorneys, headed by Jordanian Mohammad Rashdan and including Ayesha Qaddafi (Libya), Curtis Doebbler (United States), Emmanuel Ludot (France), Marc Henzelin (Switzerland) and Giovanni Di Stefano (United Kingdom). Toward the end of the hearing, the deposed president refused to sign the legal document confirming his understanding of the charges. It has been reported, that during a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld in 2005, Saddam refused an offer of release if he made a televised request to armed groups for a ceasefire with allied forces. [http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&month=May2005&file=World_News200505026563.xml] == Incarceration == On May 20, 2005, Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers ''The Sun'' of United Kingdom and ''New York Post'', printed photos of Saddam Hussein in his jail cell wearing only his underwear with the headline "Tyrant's in his pants" (''The Sun''). On the page three of ''The Sun'' which is traditionally preserved for topless "Page Three girls", Saddam Hussein was shown wearing a white robe while doing laundry by hand, with the caption: "a pathetic figure as he washed his trousers in jail. (...) Now he sits astride a plastic pink chair while he carries out the chores of a laundry maid." [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/politics/21saddam.html?ex=1270785600&en=37bef79604f97228&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland] These photos, said to be "provided by American military sources to undermine the Iraqi rebellion" [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/politics/21saddam.html?ex=1270785600&en=37bef79604f97228&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland], were officially not authorised, being qualified "a clear violation of D.O.D. directives, and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals" by Bush's deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. The U.S. military said that it would "aggressively investigate" how the photographs of Saddam Hussein in captivity were released [http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/20/saddam.photos/index.html]. ==Personal== Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage was to his first cousin Sajida Talfah, a former teacher, in 1963. This union with the eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and surrogate, produced two sons (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein) and three daughters, Rana Hussein, Raghad Hussein and Hala Hussein. Sajida was put under house arrest in early 1997, along with daughters Raghad and Rana, because they were suspected of being involved in an attempted assassination of Uday on December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, who was Sajida's brother and Saddam Hussein's boyhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity. Saddam Hussein also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumored to be his favorite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a son, Ali Hussein, by Samira. [[Image:SaddamandRana.jpg.jpg|thumb|200px|Saddam with his daughter, Rana Hussein]] In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel al Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel, defected to Jordan, taking their children with them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both of the Majid brothers were executed. Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known in the United States as "Chemical Ali," who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas in 1988. Ali is now in U.S. custody. As mentioned above, Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces. In August 2003 Saddam's daughters Raghad and Rana received sanctuary in Amman, Jordan, where they are staying with their nine children. That month, they spoke with CNN and the Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya in Amman. When asked about her father, Raghad told CNN, "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart." Asked if she wanted to give a message to her father, she said: "I love you and I miss you." Her sister Rana also remarked, "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us." ==Notes== Under his government, this date was his official date of birth. His real date of birth was never recorded, but it is believed to be a date between 1935 and 1939. This is because precise dates of birth were often not recorded in the region where he was born, and peasant children, such as Saddam, were often given a nominal birth date of July 1st, which is why his birth date is sometimes given as July 1, 1939. From Con Coughlin, ''Saddam The Secret Life'' Pan Books, 2003 (ISBN 0330393103).
''Saddam'' (pronounced "Sad-DAHM" or "Suh-DAM"; during the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush pronounced his name "SAD-dum"), his personal name, means ''the stubborn one'' or ''he who confronts'' in Arabic. ''Hussein'' is not a Family name in the Western sense but a patronymic; it is his father's given personal name; ''Abd al-Majid'' his grandfather's, and ''al-Tikriti'' means he was born and raised in (or near) Tikrit. He is commonly referred to as ''Saddam Hussein'', or ''Saddam'' for short. Some observers have argued that referring to the deposed Iraqi president as only ''Saddam'' may be derogatory and academically inappropriate, considering that Westerners often mispronounce the name "Saddám" as "Sádom," adding a religious rhetorical connotiation to "Sodom" — the city which according to the Bible was destroyed by God for its sin. Others claim that those who so argue are mistakenly assuming Hussein to be a family name. The ''New York Times'' regularly refers to him as "Mr. Hussein" [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?8br], while Encyclopædia Britannica prefers to address the man simply as ''Saddam'' [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=42559]. A full discussion can be found [http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/saddam_hussein.html here].
See PBS Frontline (2003), "The survival of Saddam: secrets of his life and leadership: interview with Saïd K. Aburish" at [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish2.html].
BBC News, October 16, 2000 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/974987.stm]
From Elisabeth Bumiller's interview of Jerrold M. Post, the founder of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA in the ''New York Times'' (May 15, 2004) on the importance of events during Saddam Hussein's youth. It can be read online at [http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/11/2004/05/#5225].
For further details see Khadduri, Majid. ''Socialist Iraq''. The Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C., 1978.
A free-access on-line archive relating to U.S.–Iraq relations in the 1980s is offered by ''The National Security Archive'' of the George Washington University. It can be read on line at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/]. The Mount Holyoke International Relations Program also provides a free-access document briefing on U.S.–Iraq relations (1904–present); this can be accessed on line at [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq.htm].
For a statement asserting the overriding importance of oil to U.S. national security and the U.S. economy, see, e.g., the declassified document, "Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf," The White House, National Security Directive (NSD 54), top secret, January 15, 1991. This document can be read on line in [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/ George Washington University's National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 21] at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/06-01.htm].
See Margaret Thatcher, ''The Downing Street Years'' (1979-1990), 817.
For further details see Globe and Mail Update, "Hussein does Baghdad walkabout" [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030404.wmain0404_5/BNPrint/International] Apr. 4, 2003.
The full text of Bush's 2002 State of the Union address can be read on line (BBC News) at [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1790537.stm].
Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein leading up to the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20 can be read on line (CBSNEWS.com) at [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/eveningnews/main541817.shtml].
For coverage of the postwar CNN and Al-Arabiya interviews with Saddam's daughters, see [http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-08-01-saddams-daughters_x.htm]
==See also== * Baghdad International Airport (formerly Saddam International Airport) * Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq * Human rights in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq * Operation Rockingham * Saddam Hussein in U.S. popular culture ==External links== *[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1100529.stm BBC Saddam Hussein profile] *[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/801925.cms Saddam a hero: Daughter] (''The Times of India'', August 3, 2004) *[http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report18.htm The Iraqi Resistance Site] (includes an archive of Saddam Hussein's recent audiotape recordings posted by the London-based "Free Arab Voice") *[http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/dec2003/a121403a.html American Forces Press Service announcement of Saddam Hussein's capture] *[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+iq0023) Saddam Hussein Biography] *[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/index.htm The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook] — Provided by the ''National Security Archive''. *[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm 1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor] *[http://www.strategypage.com/iraqwar/hamaza/default.asp Tammuz I, Iraqi nuclear reactor] *[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm Osiraq] *[http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0208/timeline.chemical.weapons/content.6.html CNN map of chemical weapon attacks against Iraqi Kurd population] *[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html Iraqi Scientist Reports on German, Other Help for Iraq Chemical Weapons Program] *[http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/27/sproject.irq.kurds/ CNN Report on Iraqi Kurds] *[http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.nirq.saddam.future/index.html Saddam to face Iraqi war crimes tribunal, and some of his comments] *[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SADDAMS_GUARDS?SITE=CARDB&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME Saddam Insists He's Still Iraq President] News From The Associated Press 1937 births Iraqi heads of government Iraqi heads of state Members of Saddam Hussein's family U.S.-Iraqi relations Field Marshals simple:Saddam Hussein
Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 1 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 2 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 3 | /Archive 4 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 5 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 6 Talk:Saddam Hussein/naming contains the collected discussion on the naming of Saddam Hussein. Please do not attempt to change the use of Saddam's name in this article without reading and understanding the archived discussion. Thank you. The archive includes the following issues: * "Saddam" vs "Hussein" vs "Saddam Hussein" as the short form of the name in the article. * Whether there should be some form of disclaimer regards which is "correct" on the article * Transliterations: Husayn vs Hussain == Flawed intro == The intro contains the following sentence: "While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Arabs for standing up to the West and for his staunch support for the Palestinians,4 the United States continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War." I have a few problems with this. #1. I do not believe he was a hero to "many" Arabs, rather a hero to "some" Arabs. This is because many, many Arabs hate him with a true passion, probably because Saddam has killed more Arabs than any single person in modern history (last few hundred years). The number of Palestinians who may have liked Saddam and much smaller than the Arabs of southern Iraq who hate him. :No. See the citation that goes along with the sentence. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #2. Saddam’s support for the Palestinians has always been minor, and only increased in the last few years by his donations of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, aka, support for terrorism. :Support for the Palestinian cause had consistently been a major part of his brand of Ba'aathism, foreign policy, and personality cult, and this did not go unnoticed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Again see the citation that goes along with the sentence bringing up the Palestinians. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #3. The sentence begins by showing why some/many Arabs supported Saddam, then ends by saying the US viewed him with deep suspicion. This is unbalanced. There needs to be a reason to explain why the US viewed him with suspicion, especially considering there is an explanation of why Arabs like him. By omitting this reason, one can easily infer that the suspicion was because of his support for the Palestinians, and this is false. The US viewed him with suspicion because he was not upholding the cease-fire agreement, violating the UN resolutions, deceiving the weapons inspectors, and attempted to assassinate George Bush Sr. during a visit to Kuwait. :Why the U.S. viewed him with suspicion is obvious. And listing is inappropriate in the intro. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #4. I don't think the Palestinian issue deserves to be in the introduction, because it is so minor. :Again, the Palestinain problem was major aspect of his ideology and foreign policy. It must be mentioned in the intro. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Links with French political circles == Shouldn't "cementing close ties with French political and business circles" be replaced by "cementing close ties with French business and conservative political circles"? As far as I know, privilegied relationships with African or Middle-Eastern strong-man regimes is a trademark of the "old Gaullist guard" (Charles Pasqua etc.). I don't know of any similar relationships with left-wing political circles. User:David.Monniaux 11:04, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Good point. Neither do I. I would not object to the change proposed above. User:172 11:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Ok, I changed the sentence. User:David.Monniaux 13:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) ''Saddam was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and was captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003. The Iraqi Interim Government subsequently charged him with crimes against humanity.'' While not incorrect, this wording lends the impression that immediately following his capture he was handed over to a sovereign Iraqi government, which had intended to put him on trial. This was not the case, with the official handover of sovereignty not having taken place and his first court appearance still about half a year away. I changed the wording. User:172 13:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) =="Bemused thoughts" (conspiracy theory about Saddam, Israel, and Wikipedia)== Just to make you all aware:
><
User:Ta bu shi da yu 09:23, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Again I have to express disbelief that the zealous guardians of this article genuinely
believe it to be neutral, in its current form. Come out of the closet! do not be ashamed of your motives, admit you feel it is humanitarian and noble to defend Saddam being called "A rising star in the revolutionary Ba'ath Party", (no mention of his trial as a direct war criminal and on what suspicions), while Arik Sharon is termed "The Butcher of Beirut", (every mention of the failed attempt to put him on trial as a war criminal, though it was for indirect responsibility of allied Christian militia crimes, mind you) ... all in the same neutral Encycolpedia!
I am mystified as for the possible moral ground here; justify it instead of hiding behind a procedural beurocracy.
Why is it so important to pretend neutrality? in 50 years, Israel shall be gone anyway but your earnest efforts to that end shall go uncredited and unrewarded.
Be proud of your motives, so that one day, you will be to tell your grandchildren by the fireplace, "In my small way, I was part of that."
or perhaps I am wrong after all; not humble care for the future-but mere cowardly mathematics, weighing the traditionally shorter lifespan afflicting detractors of Iraqi leaders, compared to the relative safety and comfort of criticizing Israeli figures?
And as to this:
"As far as I know, privilegied relationships with African or Middle-Eastern strong-man regimes is a trademark of the "old Gaullist guard" ..."
Is "as far as I know" sufficient for references? as far as I know, Jaques Chirac, then (1976) Prime Minister of France and later the Socialist Government of Mitterand, were solid supporters of Saddam's nuclear enrichment project, and not some anonymous old guards, Why, here is an article with a photo of the two latter day civil rights champions, discussing Sartre, the black panthers and Edward Said, no doubt, in one of their favorite activist hangouts: a nuclear reactor. [http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31552 Ah the good ole days, before those beastly Israelis had F-16s]
[http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/9/91851.shtml More Chirac nostalgia]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/07/wmd107.xml Iraqi contributions to French Socialist Party funds] - no, no connections to Socialism as far as I know, how dare you?
:Your reaction, sorry to say so, appears to be typical of what happens when people describe the events in foreign countries from press reports without having the background to know what they're talking about.
:It is well known and well documented that there is some "old guard" of the Gaullist RPR party (people like Charles Pasqua, Didier Julia...) that have had some cozy relationships with African and Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes. For instance, Didier Julia pretended that his personal relationships with former baathists officials would enable him to obtain the freedom of some French hostages. For instance, from the 14 to the 17th of Septembre 2002, Julia went to Iraq with Thierry Mariani and Éric Diard – all were members of UMP, the successor of RPR.
:In comparison, there does not appear to have been any kind of personal relationship involving France's left wing parties. At the time (1981-1986 or so), France supported Iraq just like a large of the West, including the United States: because Iran was the big bad villain, and Iraq was fighting Iran. As for the allegations about Joxe, they seem highly uncorroborated. Anybody can mention any politician anywhere as having taking bribes – does this mean we should believe them without proof? (Presumption of innocence and all that.)
:So, my point is: the support of Iraq by the left-wing governments of the early 1980s was motivated by Iraq's taking on Khomeiny's Iran, while there existed some more personal ties with some of the conservative circles. I note that Mitterrand also approved and committed troops for the First Gulf War.
:As for nuclear enrichment, it is highly disputed that Osiraq could have been used to produce weapon-grade material, given the way it was operated. User:David.Monniaux 09:14, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Also as far as I (and CNN, too bad their domain doesn't inherit your Wikipedia block rights) know, Saddam ordered His Air force to Chemical bomb 60 Kurd Villages, which you continously block. Why is my as Far as I know not as good as your as far as you know?
[http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/27/sproject.irq.kurds/ CNN Report on Iraqi Kurds]
[http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0208/timeline.chemical.weapons/content.6.html CNN Map]
::Stop making incoherent rants. We already cover the chemical attack on the Kurds and Franco-Iraqi relations... BTW, I am an Ashkenazi Jew and a lifelong Zionist. To me what you are insinuating above is insulting and disgusting enough to make me consider the idea of blocking you indefinitely. User:172 21:54, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I am sorry if they are incoherent to you, and doubly sorry if you are insulted by them.
However if you are insulted by insinuations of sympathy to Saddam, and you consistently revert an article intro to a form which in my view is sympathetic to Saddam, what else am I to infer: the word "chemical" is nought to be found in the entire body of the article, save for my links to CNN sites (probably an oversight of one of the blockers who left them there)
"Bombing Kurd villages" fails to mention the uniqueness of the first WMD attacks on civilians since World War II. This is at least as important for the intro as the foreign influence on Palestinians, considering the Kurds ARE Iraqi citizens and not foreign. Show me one profile for a world leader in wiki whose second intro paragraph blabs about his influence on a foreign nation! failing that, one must give at least one example of Saddam's brutality, take your pick: Genocide, Stalinist Purges, Mass body graves.
:Nonsense. References to chemical weapons appear throughout the article, with yet more references to specific types of weapons (e.g., anthrax, nerve gas, nuclear weapons). The content on al-Anfal and Halabjah is more detailed than the content on all the battles and campaigns against Iran (even though one could argue that the latter is more pressing militarily and strategically). The intro states clearly that the Iran-Iraq War was devastating economically and in humanitarian terms; this is made quite clear as the article progresses. User:172 08:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Regarding blocking, You follow your conscience, and I'll follow mine. If you feel my criticism is injust, explain to me why I am wrong in my arguments regarding
exposure and positioning of the facts in the intro.
:Wikipedia has policies against personal attacks, trolling, and disruption. I am merely one in 300-or-so users responsible for enforcing them. User:172 08:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
To my view they emphasize Saddam's positive aspects much more than the negatives, even if they are detailed later in the depths of the article. This is what sympathetic means- of course it is not lying, but as in restaurants, location is everything. Opposing views deserve equal exposure in the same place they are discussed. Saddam's threatened and actual WMD attacks on civilians, and its political ramifications, is a fair opposing view to the Palestinian issue and the heroic stance against the west.
:You are totally misunderstanding the intro. No editor to this article is saying that his interference in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his bellicose posturing against the U.S. was "heroic" or "positive." (I certainly view it as another example of his bellicose, belligerent, inflexible, and stubborn behavior, which left Iraq an isolated pariah state.) We mention that he has his admirers, however, because the Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View requires us to balance the nearly universally-held view in the U.S. with the other POV (however wrong) espoused by radical, disaffected elements of the Arab world. User:172 08:38, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I cannot stand by while children from the world over read this blatantly unbalanced article, which refers to Saddam's brutalities as gently as possible, while this gentleness is sorely lacking in dealing with Israeli figures. Let me give you a purely speculative example, of what may happen if this sort of trend isn't protested against. The 2050 Wikipedia Entry for Hitler could mutate to:
"A rising star in 20th Century German politics, espousing world unity, secular pan-Europism, economic modernization, and national socialism. Elected democratically as Chancellor (later renamed himself Fuhrer of Germany). Replaced the frail and elderly president Hindenburg. As Fuhrer, developed a pervasive personality cult and maintained power through the devastating World War II, (1939–1945), which both corresponded with a sharp decline in living standards and the human rights situation.
Notable vegetarian and supporter of pacifism among his opponents.
While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Germans for standing up to the West, the United States and its Allies continued to view Hitler with deep suspicion...."
and then lengthy paragraphs with fascinating material on his romances with Eva Brown,
love of Dogs and aesthetic tastes in art and architecture. Berlin Olympics to follow,
softening the reader up for the unobtrusive reference to his somewhat less atrributable contributions to mankind.
Well now I can at least say I told you so. If you think a majority of Iraqi people would support your version of Saddam's intro over mine, I think you'd be mistaken.
:It is absurd to say that any of the content in the article portrays him gently. The one theme that comes up over and over again in the article is that his rule lacked the consent of most elements of Iraqi society, forcing him to take repressive measures against most groups in Iraq and employ aggressive tactics against his neighbors. What does this tell the reader? It tells the reader that he was nothing more than a gangster originally lacking support from all groups in Iraq except his fellow gangsters from Tikrit. The article describes in detail how he stayed in power despite his total illegitimacy: terrorizing the Shiites, Communists, and Kurds; paying off the rest of the population, made possible by nationalizing the oil industry in 1972; skillfully playing foreign powers against each other, at least until 1991; and using the Palestinian problem to cloak his regime with some legitimacy in the Arab world. So he comes across as nothing more than a thug skillful for a while at propping himself up by manipulating all the contenting powers in the region, who lost his game as the balance of power in the region shifted in the 1990s, i.e. what he comes across as what he was, no embellishment and emotive language necessary. If this is your idea of a sympathetic portrayal, you need to reread (or read) Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. User:172 10:01, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I was referring mainly to the INTRO not the rest of the article.
The intro does not mention at all any of:
* the "repressive measures" (only equivocally "human rights situation" which anyone can interpret according to his/her hearts wishes;)
* terrorizing of ethnic groups also is absent.
the term "repressive security appartus" again does not reflect Saddam's barbarism towards ethnic rivals - ('security appartus' usually means secret police, Stasi type state surveillance etc)
* "lacked consent of iraqi society" also doesn't appear there in any form;
If you put all those things in the INTRO and i'll be happier. Most people only read the intro, either because they are too lazy or too unwilling to scrutinize their prejudiced views; and an equivocal intro panders exactly to those types of readers, encouraging them. The intro should be built in such a way that fairly represents
the two main popular opposing views of Saddam: as a brutal dictator, regional threat of WMD and terrorism, vs. freedom fighter / modern Sallah a-Din whatever his supporters want to call it. It does the latter but not the former. Yes, you cannot avoid the possible reader conclusion that Saddam's popular support may not be despite his brutality but because of it; This is one of the legitimate paradoxes sorrounding this figure (and that of most dictators).
:''the two main popular opposing views of Saddam: as a brutal dictator, regional threat of WMD and terrorism, vs. freedom fighter / modern Sallah a-Din whatever his supporters want to call it'' Keep propaganda out of the into. Right now the intro is straigtforward, concise, and factual. It goes through-- and all it needs to mention-- all the important phases of his career, since this is a biographical entry, not the history of Iraq article: key dates, succession, the development of the security appartus, his personality cult, the Iran-Iraq War, the First Persian Gulf War, the Second Gulf War, his capture, and the trial. It will not include POV emotional reactions like "brutal dictator," "barbarism towards ethnic rivals." After all, no one wants to hear the opinion of pseudoanonymous Wikipedia editors who may or ''may not'' be authorities on the region, even if they are the near universial opinions in the civilized world. User:172 00:40, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
You are still ignoring the main points:
* WMD issue
* "terrorizing of ethnic groups"
* "lacked consent of iraqi society"
do not appear in the intro in any shape or form, emotional or not. These are
the main arguments of the US invasion, and would be a fair contrary balance to
the other facts mentioned in the article (Arab world popularity etc),
The arab POV is the only POV that the intro deems justified enough to explain and SUPPORT with facts.
The US reaction is only MENTIONED, but not SUPPORTED with facts or explained. This is not NPOV. This is APOV...
And since when "no one wants to hear" unauthorised editors here ?
Wikipedia claims to be unique as an editable encyclopedia - not a dogmatic shrine of duly authorised editors;
wasn't it supposed to reflect fact backed universal opinions in the civilized world, even if they do irritate a minority of experts?
:"Terrorizing... ethnic groups" and "lacked consent of Iraqi society" are POV; no one is interested in the interpretations/opinions of pseudoanonymous Wikipedia editors. At any rate, these points are already thoroughly evident, but worded in a way that complys with Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. (The article mentions that the Ba'athists seized power in a coup. It mentions that Saddam built up a repressive security appartus and forged a personality cult around himself in order to maintain power. The article mentions the deteriorating conditions of human rights... Regarding WMDs, it is not always known when/whether or not he had access to which kinds of weapons. In order to avoid making a controversial statement on a highly politicized issue, we simply mention deteriorating relations with the West, and deal with the weapons issue in the article precisely and accurately in proper context.) You seem to be bent on turning a carefully worded and comprehensive NPOV intro into a POV one... Also, give up the notion that the intro is the only important part of the article. It doesn't matter if many people don't go on to read the article. The function of the intro is to introduce the ''article''; it is never supposed to be considered a self-standing entry in and of itself. User:172 20:23, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
* "terrorizing of ethnic groups"
* "lacked consent of iraqi society"
You brought up these points in this discussion but refuse to integrate them into the intro.
::I am allowed to state my POV on the talk page in these blunt terms, but not in the intro. You are bringing up what I was saying completely out of context. User:172 16:13, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
So in short you agree, that this article does not represent the near univeral POV of the west, because that would be too controversial to the east. And opening the intro on
Saddam Hussein with a glowing "A rising star"... is much more controversial than
mentioning the above bulleted points, and that he had pursued and used WMD's. Chemical attacks on the Kurds are irrefutable evidence.
:"Rising star" merely refers to the rapid rise in his status within the Ba'ath party, which no one can argue with. One can even point to many declassified documents by Western policymakers taking note of his rising status in the late '60s and '70s. See, e.g., [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/iraq01.pdf], [[http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/iraq02.pdf], [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/iraq03.pdf]. User:172 16:13, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The only apparent difference between the former and the latter is where the controversy lies: the intro has no lack of courage to be bold on issues disputed in the west, but smoothes over points that are likely to anger less tolerant POVS; in other words: encouraging these. It should be either
neutral on both POVS, or equally bold.
:The intro is neutral on both POVs; every single statement is almost a matter of common knowledge now, after years of intense media coverage on Iraq, matter-of-fact, and straightforward. You just seem to be over-interpreting the statements mentioning his meteoric rise in the party and the popularity that he derived from the Palestinian problem. These two things are brought up because they are important features of his career, not because they are "good" or "bad." We are not interested in value judgments-- or not even supposed to be engaging in them. User:172 16:13, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've reworded a bit of the intro. User:David.Monniaux 09:25, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== The veracity of Rabeh's claims ==
From the [http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/40310 related Metafilter discussion] on this issue, a few questions emerge: What has Saddam said about how he was captured? What are the details of Rabeh's identity, and how can we be sure he is who the article claims he is? The article needs corroboration from another source, as does Rabeh's assertion. A quick [http://news.google.com/news?q=rabeh&hl=en&lr=&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&filter=0 Google News search] for "Rabeh" turns up several results, some of which call him "Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh." So there's his rank, at least. [http://www.nationalledger.com/scribe/archives/2005/03/former_marine_s.shtml Here's] a criticism of the United Press story. A guy (Illuvatar) on the [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1487984 Something Awful] forums says ''First of all, there were no major Marine units in Iraq at the time that Saddam was captured. The last Marines to leave Iraq left at the end of September '03 (I was in the last Marine convoy to leave Iraq, trust me on this one). Marines did not re-enter Iraq en masse until January of '04.'' He also says that [http://icasualties.org/oif/BY_DOD.aspx searching here] turns up no results of any Marines of Sudanese descent dying in the time period in question, and that [https://lnweb1.manpower.usmc.mil/manpower/mm/mmma/AwardsVerification.nsf/search this search] doesn't turn up Rabeh's name. And then there's the questions of why Rabeh didn't speak up at the time of Hussein's capture, and where the pictures of the inside of Saddam's "spider-hole" came from if it really was actually an abandoned well. The pictures I've seen don't look much like a well.
:Only blog sources are definitively claiming the allegations are not comming from a U.S. Marine. Do you actually give that low a credibility to what a soldier from the field has to say? Obviously if that unit had 8 Marines of middle eastern decent it was likely sent on special assignments such as capturing Saddam, don't you agree? Why are there so many people that try to discount the Marine's story without using logic? I accept the possibility his story might be false, can you accept the possibility it could be true? I believe the Marine more than I believe allegations there were no Marines in iraq then (that is a very psychologically subtle way of tricking people into not even considering the possibility that the allegations could be true). User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 16:22, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
: "First of all, there were no major Marine units in Iraq at the time that Saddam was captured." Wrong, the Marines have been there from the beginning of the war, and will be there unil the end. They simply rotate folks thru Iraq. The idea that there were no major Marine units in Iraq at the time of the capture is nonsense. (anonymous editor)
Don't get worked up over this. I'm not flatly denying that this story might have some validity; however, this is a new claim about Saddam's capture from a single source several months after the fact, and as such it is highly suspect.
"''Why are there so many people that try to discount the Marine's story without using logic? I accept the possibility his story might be false, can you accept the possibility it could be true?''"
Neither politics nor ideology enters the formation of my opinion on this. I am not a conservative deriding this story as "anti-American," or whatever. Rabeh's story may be fact or it may not. But the balance of evidence is strongly against him--that is, nobody but him has made this claim, and he has provided no proof, only allegations--and I believe that until corroboration can be found, his story should be treated with great caution. User:Mr. Billion 21:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) :The balance of proof is not against Rabeh's allegations, the word of a U.S. Marine grunt is much more highly respected than all neo-cons at the pentagon's. I remember reading a "conspiracy" theory a number of months ago that stated the real number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq was closer to 5,000 than 1,500, this might explain the apparent discrepancy of not having a Sudanese Marine killed during the real Saddam capture. Hopefully whatever the truth is it comes out fully someday. It should also be noted the manner in which these conservative bloggers are attacking Rabeh's claims, they aren't trying to debunk his arguments logically, they are just trying to trick people into believing what they want them to believe (which likely causes long term psychological harm since people end up thinking less). User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 17:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) "''The balance of proof is not against Rabeh's allegations''"
......... User:Mr. Billion 20:29, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) :huh? User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 23:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) : "the word of a U.S. Marine grunt is much more highly respected than all neo-cons at the pentagon's" You just showed yourself to be biased and ignorant, congradulations, we will now ignore you. (anonymous editor) ::Thanks for attacking me personally rather than debating logically. FYI: opinion and POV is acceptable on talk pages. I am actually trying to work towards removing subtle POV and opinion from this article. You also fail to note my statement above was in response to a statement that questioned a U.S. Marine's integrity (so you are attacking me for defending a Marine's integrity, oh the irony by the subtle misdirection loving POV pushers). Let me state for the record that even though you are apparently misguided I won't ignore you. User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 16:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC) I'm just glad that that jackass 172 is done, maybe there can be real progress on the article now, rather than bullshit about how Saddam "never fowgott" the instability which FORCED THE POOR LAD to torture and mutilate the Shi'a and Kurdish populace. It was for unity! User:Trey Stone 09:11, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC) Regarding the asinine claims of a supposed Marine, why is this unsubstaniatied claim given any mention here? (From [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=12.222.234.45 12.222.234.45]) ==Weapons inspections== If I'm not mistaken Saddam accused the US of using weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq. This was later backed up by one of the weapons inspectors who admitted he was doing so for the US. I don't see this anywhere in the article. Although this was probably not the primary reason he rejected weapons inspectors, surely it's inclusion is worthy? Also, I think the bit about why Saddam rejected inspectors should also include the theory that it may have been because he was arrogant and hated what he regarded as an invasion of his country by the inspectors and not just the theory that he wanted to remain seen as a threat ** Since we are speculating about motives, consider this, President Bush wanted to invade Iraq, but needed "justification". President Bush gets the weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq, leaks the information to Saddam, Saddam reacts, Bush gets his justification and the rest is history. More or less what each President has done since WWII to get their "justification". == Fluctuating Intro == I have added a truthful and up to date summaried appraisal to Saddam Hussein. It keeps being reverted to the previous version which began "Saddam Hussein was a rising star". Sddam Hussein came to power by killing his opponents, and remained in power by killing his opponents. The fact that there is also only a cursory mention of the Special Tribunal is ridiculous. I have now directly linked a summary of the IST's task with the article. Please do not alter the intro backwards again! :The old intro calls him a rising star within the Baath Party, which means nothing more than he was rising up the party ranks in the 1960s and early 1970s. Is this untrue? Of course it is not. Your complaint against the old intro is dubious. Futher, by managing to fit in as many emotive terms as possible into your version, we have a flagrant violation of Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. User:Chaebol 19:33, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Deletion == A large slice of text was deleted. Is this deliberate, or is it unpatrolled vandalism? User:Jfdwolff | User_talk:Jfdwolff 16:00, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC) == This is not Saddam Hussein == http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg It's a double. I recall this video footage fooled BBC correspondant Ragi Omar at the time, but it is simply not Saddam. I am a professional artist who works a lot reproducing faces from photos and I can spot the difference a mile off. It's a mediocre double. Just thought I would let you know. == Fn 2 "Saddam" == According to the article, Britannica (since when do we care what Britannica thinks?) uses "Saddam", and links to an article (header) which appears to corroborate this. But the CBC article that "explains it all" says: "Following this convention, then, "Hussein" would appear to stand out as the obvious choice, and a few large papers have embraced it, including the Globe and Mail, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. It's also the path taken by some encyclopedias, including Britannica and Columbia." Hence the judgement that Saddam is more appropriate than Hussein, simply because its informally popular needs some explanation. -User:Stevertigo|User_talk:Stevertigo 00:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC) It isn't because it is "informally popular". It is because it is factually correct. Saddam is what we would regard as a surname. For some reason some US sources in the 2nd Gulf War bizarrely began to use ''Hussein'' (unlike in the rest of the world, and indeed in the US media in the 1st Gulf War). Internationally, the US use of Hussein as a surname is regarded at best as a joke, at worst at worst as an example of "illiterate dumbing down" (comment by ex-US diplomat on a radio show in Ireland a year ago). Fear''ÉIREANN''\user_talk:Jtdirl 01:05, 17 May 2005 (UTC) == Just one minor comment on the article == Under the heading 2003 invasion of Iraq the article (19:06, May 16, 2005) states "In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush) spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq". I know the phrase is commonly quoted "axis of evil"; but I seem to recall once hearing in a news broadcast that actually that is a misquote, and what Bush actually said was "axis of hatred". Just thought I'd raise this point. Perhaps someone has archives of news reports at the time, and can check up on this - assuming it is important enough that is. User:Polsequ95 23:54, May 16, 2005 (UTC) :Check out Axis of evil. User:DopefishJustin User talk:DopefishJustin 15:45, May 24, 2005 (UTC) == The photo abuse == The leak of Saddam's "IN HIS PANTS" pictures (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/20/saddam.photos/index.html), in my opinion, has nothing to do with tabloids. Rupert Murdoch may want to buy and print the pictures. But if the U.S. keeps the pictures managed, Rupert Murdoch gets nothing. It's a jail. You can't send your Paparazzi to the jail to take these pictures. The U.S. government shall be held responsible for the leak. This is an important issue. -- User:Toytoy 08:11, May 24, 2005 (UTC) : Yet there should be a way to densify the information a little bit. With three paragraphs, this part put the article off-balance; it should be one paragraph at most... User:Rama 08:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :: Be bold! -- User:Toytoy 09:31, May 24, 2005 (UTC) == Archaeology of rumor == The following text was inserted by [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=12.74.187.234 12.74.187.234] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=209.247.222.98 209.247.222.98] to replace "(No evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to have been found)" : ''A Legal decision by Judge Harold Baer, a Clinton nominee, in the 1st Circuit Court in Manhattan legally establishes proof of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. The civil trial included vast amounts of evidence including testimony about a hjacking school at Salman Pak and testimony from Bill Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey. [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/08/1052280380297.html]'' Even Dick Cheney claimed last September never to have suggested a link between Iraq and 9/11. The edit's double reference to Clinton appears to be a political jab. I bet that Mr. Bush would have liked to have seen these "vast amounts of evidence" to which Baer was privy. If that were the case, he probably could have based his case for war on more sound footing than nonexistent WMD and the possibility that bin Laden and Hussein concievably ''could'' work together. It turns out, they've been working together all along! I'll quote somebody else's comments on this issue: ''First, because Iraq didn't show up to defend the case, the only issue Judge Baer decided was whether there was enough evidence to send the case to a jury, not whether the facts actually support a finding of Iraqi involvement. That is an extremely low standard under the law and, more importantly, doesn't involve any evaluation of credibility, any cross-examination, etc. There is no finding at all that Iraq was behind the attacks, just a finding that the plaintiffs met the bare minimum threshhold to allow a case to go forward.'' [http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2004/05/13.html] The judge criticized the arguments as based on "classical hearsay" but said that the case was technically sufficient, "albeit barely." [http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/5-09-03/discussion.cgi.53.html] Part of the plaintiffs' case was based on the Czech report of a supposed Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer. Czech intelligence has since retracted that report and neither the CIA nor FBI now believe that the meeting ever happened. Actually, just go look at Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks. First entry. Bin Laden considered Hussein an "infidel" and supported anti-Saddam islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mohammed Atta considered Hussein "an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East," et cetera et cetera. There seems to be a continuing irrational fixation on Iraq. It's bewildering that some people choose to grasp at weak or nonexistent links to Iraq when the countries to which al Qaeda is tied are so obvious. Ignored in the Iraq obsession is the overt and active support or strong links to al Qaeda from other nations such as (of course) Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan, where bin Laden based his operations for years in the 1990s at the invitation of Hassan al Turabi, a Sudanese leader. ''The country that started this [pattern of Islamic extremism], Iran, is about to turn around, 180 degrees. We ought to be focused on that. The father of extremism, the home of the ayatollah -- the young people are ready to throw out the mullahs and turn around, become a secular society and throw off these ideas of extremism. That is more important and critical. They're the ones that funded Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. That ought to be a focus. And I can give you many, many more before you get down to Saddam and Iraq.'' :--[http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html General Anthony Zinni] I don't think that the assertions of an Iraqi link are accurate and I wish people would stop digging up discredited arguments from years ago. I'm restoring the previous text. User:Mr. Billion 01:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Yes, since Iraq didn't show up to defend itself the best the anon editor could argue is that the allegation went "uncontested", which is hardly a determination of fact or proof. And don't forget about the 1980s links between the USA and proto Al Qaeda. User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 03:53, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
#REDIRECT User:SH
Discussion of the name change from "Saddam Hussein" to SH" follows. See user talk:SH for other Talk ----- Thank you for improving the entries for Palestinian views of the peace process and Circumcision. Please keep up the good work. --User:Zippy 09:04, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Discussion of whether SH is a vandal or not below [problem user] User:Saddam Hussein copied the Saddam Hussein page into his user page. He still haven't edited anything for now. User:At18 16:55, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC) : since this time, user has made a number of helpful minor corrections to Palestinian views of the peace process, circumcision, weapons of mass destruction, and about a dozen other articles. --User:Zippy 06:00, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- If it turns out that this person is not infact Saddam Hussein, and the user does some serious vandalism, there is a possibility that Saddam Hussein might have grounds for complaint. I think we should at least require that she/he provide a real mailing address or phone-number. -- User:Cimon avaro 07:14, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC) :GPS coordinates perhaps?User:Ark30inf 07:19, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC) : O. A celebrity. Wee. --User:Menchi 08:41, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC) You know, famous people do not have a monolopy on their name! There are probably at least tens of Saddam Husseins in the world. Before WW2 I'm sure there were numerous Adolf Hitlers. Don't jump on this guy for offensive user name or whatever before you know for sure. User:Cgs 11:26, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC). :::Not to mention a bunch of Jesuses running around in Spain. - User:Sigg3.net 15:23, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::Ahem. Just as a small hint, why not check his userpage at User:Saddam Hussein? I know that Saddam Hussein is kind of like George Adams in the relative commonness department. But the full name given on the userpage is the whole rigamarole including the al-tikriti etc. stuff. And there is a pretty unmistakable photograph. In fact it is the article from wikipedia, with even the other-language links intact. While I am not sure that the users name is not Saddam Hussein; I am convinced that anyone really named Saddam Hussein would not fault us for being pointedly sceptical. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick ::: Yeah, ok. I didn't look at the edit history. But still, keep it in mind for the future. User:Cgs 15:09, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC). ---- Someone wrote on this user page: ''Note: this user is probably not Saddam Hussein'' It must be the funniest thing I read on Wikipedia for a long time :-) User:At18 18:21, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC) : Glad to be of service. :) User:MyRedDice 19:31, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- I think this is User:Paektu. User:Mbecker 21:21, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC) Dear Saddam. Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia! We just have a few questions to ask you. If you wouldn't mind, please drop by your local American military base for a quick chat, ok? We have many offices in your local to serve you better! Thanks! ;-) User:RK ---- Your corrections are appriciated. User:Mbecker 22:28, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC) ---- We have at present no policy on use of real or famous people's names as userids. There is one I believe against overtly politically motivated or inflammatory names. I think there's no issue though legally, as, no one believes that User:Saddam_Hussein is actually the Saddam Hussein on the news. Do they? If they did, it could become grounds for a defamation action. Who knows who could actually go to a court room though pretending to represent Saddam? At least without a bomb landing on it, or getting their face added to a deck of playing cards. User:EntmootsOfTrolls ---- Dear Saddam, as a tyrant and dictator (I am assuming you are Mr. S. Hussein, former CIA guy, totalitarian leader, etc., etc., if I am wrong then please ignore any comments that might be directed to your namesake) you are perhaps not familiar with the terminology used in Canadian constitutional history. There is in fact a word called patriation that we Canadians use to talk about the time when our constitution was given to us by the Queen, similar to what George W. Bush did for the Iraqi people when he deposed you, eh? User:Alex756 ---- Users should be able to do what they want with their personal user pages. Reverting this page because "an encyclopedia is not a joke" is misguided - a user page is not an encyclopedia entry. It's a place for the user to describe themselves or their interests, or even to experiment with editing wiki pages. It is not, in my opinion, a place for strong editor attention. --User:Zippy 08:58, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) : It has been established that there are limits to what an editor can do with their own pages. The issue here, however, is mostly the offending account name, not the page itself. User:Daniel Quinlan 01:30, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC) :: Actually, there was an edit war over the content of Saddam Hussein's user page. My comment was directed at that edit war. --User:Zippy 18:22, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC) == Offensive username == User:Saddam Huss
Saddam Hussein
Saddām Hussein ʻAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrīt, spelled Husayn or Hussain; Arabic language صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي; born April 28, 1937 ) was President of Iraq from 1979 until 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and socialism, Saddam (''see regarding names'') played a key role in the bloodless 1968 coup d'état that brought the party to power. As vice president under the frail and elderly Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between government departments and the armed forces--at a time when many organizations were considered capable of overthrowing the government--by forging a repressive security apparatus. Meanwhile, Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace in the 1970s. As president, he developed a pervasive personality cult, ran an authoritarian government, and maintained power through the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the first Persian Gulf War (1991), which both corresponded with a sharp decline in standard of living and the human rights situation. Saddam's government repressed movements that it deemed threatened his rule, especially ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy such as the Kurdish and Shiite populations. While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Arabs for standing up to the West and for his staunch support for the Palestinians, the United States and other members of the international community continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Saddam was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 Iraq War. Captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003, he will stand trial under the Iraq Special Tribunal, established by the Iraq Interim Government. ==Youth== Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit district of Iraq, to a family of sheep-herders. His mother named her newborn "Saddam," which in Arabic means "one who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterwards, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She attempted both to abortion Saddam and kill herself and refused to care for her new child when he was born. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam Hussein harshly after his return. He was abusive and forced the young boy to steal chickens and sheep for resale. At the age of ten, he fled the family to return to live with his uncle, who was a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his most influential and powerful advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, especially the lesson that he should never back down from his enemies, no matter how superior their numbers or capabilities. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalism secondary school in Baghdad. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arabism Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The stranglehold of the old elites (the conservative monarchism, established families, and merchants) was breaking down in Iraq. Moreover, the populist pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence the young Ba'athist, even up to the present day. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed the wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the fifties and sixties, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser challenged the United Kingdom and France, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically. ==Rise in the Ba'ath party== A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, ''in absentia''. In exile he attended the Cairo University School of Law. Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new government was ousted quickly, within seven to eight months torn by rife factionalism. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party. According to many biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, namely party unity and the ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability. In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power under General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Tikriti and a relative of Saddam. The Ba'ath's ruling clique named Saddam vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolution Command Council and vice president of Iraq. ==Consolidation of power== [[Image:AlBakr.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Saddam Hussein talking with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr]] In 1976 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government, and was the ''de facto'' ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. By the late 1970s, Saddam had emerged as the undisputed ''de facto'' leader of Iraq. ===Saddam's consolidation of power and the modernization of Iraq=== Saddam consolidated power in a nation riddled with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic fault lines: Sunni Islam versus Shi'a Islam, Arab versus Kurds, tribe versus merchant, nomad versus peasant. Stable rule in a country torn by political factionalism and conflict required the improvement of living standards. Saddam moved up the ranks in the new government by aiding attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party and taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following. Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy along with the creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it. Ever concerned with broadening his base of support among the diverse elements of Iraqi society and mobilizing mass support, he closely followed the administration of state welfare and development programs. At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On June 1, 1972, Saddam Hussein led the process of expropriating Western oil companies, which had had a monopoly on the country's oil. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and Saddam was able to pursue an all the more ambitious agenda through skyrocketing oil revenues. Within a period of just several years, the state provided some social services to Iraqi people unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. Saddam initiated and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). [http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/saddam_hussein.html] [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/war/player1.html] In order to diversify the oil-dependent economy, Saddam oversaw and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and development of other industries to diversify the oil-dependent economy. The campaign effected a comprehensive revolution in energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, including many communities in the countryside and far outlying areas. Before the early 1970s, the majority of the population resided in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised; and peasants accounted for roughly two thirds of the populace. This number would decrease dramatically, though, during the rapid industrialization and urbanization of Iraq in the 1970s, which was propelled by Saddam's channeling of oil revenues into the rapidly growing Iraqi industrial sector and the new Ba'athist welfare programs. Nevertheless, Saddam focused intensely on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athist government in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the Iraqi countryside, the mechanization of agriculture on a large scale, and the distribution of land to farmers. He broke up the large holdings of the landowners and gave land to peasant farmers. The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed in accordance with the labors of the individual peasant and the unskilled were trained. The government's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agriculture development in 1974–1975, a policy that Saddam largely spearheaded. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standards of the broad strata of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels for which Saddam had hoped. By focusing on the implementation role (often to the point of micromanaging), Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, thus widening his original popular base of support while co-opting new sectors of the Iraqi population. Part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics, expanding government services forged patron–client ties between Saddam and his support base among the working class and the peasantry and within the party and the government bureaucracy. Saddam's ruthless organizational prowess was credited with Iraq's rapid pace of development in the 1970s; development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million persons from other Arab countries and Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor. ===Succession=== In 1979 President al-Bakr began to make treaties with Syria, also under Ba'athist leadership, that would lead to unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Before this could happen, however, the ailing al-Bakr resigned on July 16, 1979. Saddam formally assumed the presidency. Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found spies and conspirators within the Ba'ath Party and read out the names of members who he thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one to face a firing squad. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. ==Saddam Hussein as a secular leader== Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the model of Nasser. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims. Domestic conflict impeded Saddam's modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's government rested on the support of the 20 percent minority of largely working-class, peasant, and petite bourgeoisie Sunni Islam, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's reliance on them as administrators. The Shi'a Islam majority were long a source of opposition to the government due to its secular policies, and the Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Sh'ia Islamism influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabizing tendencies. To maintain his regime against sources of opposition, the core of Saddam's government was made up of a retinue of close relatives and members of his Tikriti tribe. In dealing with Shiites, Kurds, Communists, and other likely regime opponents, the government tended either to provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to take repressive measures against them. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. Commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate opponents of Saddam Hussein. [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query] Saddam justified Iraqi patriotism by claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as the ancient cradle of civilization Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq. As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as on Iraqi currency. Saddam's personality cult reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant (which he essentially wore during his childhood), and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a devout Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca; at other times, he would be shown wearing a Western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle over his head. ==Foreign affairs== [[image:Chiracsaddam.jpg|frame|Saddam Hussein meeting with Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister of France, during a state visit to Paris in 1976]] In foreign affairs, Saddam sought to have Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. Iraq signed an aid pact with the Soviet Union in 1972, and arms were sent along with several thousand advisers. However, the 1978 executions of Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union, which took on a more Western orientation from then until the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979). In 1975 he negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French Osiraq, after the Egyptian God of the dead. It was destroyed by an Israeli air strike shortly before it became capable of producing weapons grade nuclear material. After Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi withdrew support for the Kurds, who suffered a total defeat. Nearly from its founding as a modern state in 1920, Iraq has had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. Saddam did negotiate an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy, but the agreement broke down. The result was brutal fighting between the government and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate. ===The Iran–Iraq War=== In 1979 Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the History of Iran#Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ruhollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule—were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population. There had also been bitter enmity between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, took up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following. Under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978. After the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini perhaps regarded toppling Saddam's government as a goal second only to consolidating power in Iran. After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. Iraq and Iran entered into open warfare on September 22, 1980. The pretext for hostilities with Iran was this territorial dispute, but the war was more likely an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansion of radical Iranian-style revolution. [[Image:Donald_saddam.jpg|frame|left|Saddam Hussein meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, at the time Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, during a visit to Baghdad, Iraq in 1983. Video frame capture, see the [http://www.misc-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/nsa_archive_media.html complete video] ]] In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Iran's oil-rich, Arab-populated province of Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human-wave attacks by Iran. By 1982 Iraq was looking for ways to end the war. Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive war of attrition of the twentieth century, with atrocities committed on both sides. During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists. Evidence has shown that many of these chemical weapons, along with Iraq's nuclear program, were in conjuction with the help of Germany. ([http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html]) On March 16, 1988 Iraqi troops, attempting to crush a Kurdish uprising in the Al-Anfal Campaign, Halabja poison gas attack with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents, perhaps killing around five thousand people, mostly civilians. Dissenting opinions dispute the numbers and have said the incident was actually a battle in the Iran–Iraq war where chemical weapons were used on both sides and a significant portion of the fatalities were caused by the Iranian weapons. Whether or not Iran had used chemical weapons in that particular battle remains unclear. Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support. Iraq successfully gained the support of the United States of America (Ronald Reagan) and took supply of chemical weapons from them [http://counterpunch.org/dixon06172004.html]. The Iranians, hoping to bring down Saddam's secular government and instigate a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq, refused a cease-fire until 1988. The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties. Perhaps upwards of 1.7 million died on both sides. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins. Iraq was also stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq into its client state, embarrassing a strongman who had sought to define and dominate Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction. ===Tensions with Kuwait=== The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam saw his war with Iran as having spared Kuwait from the imminent threat of Iranian domination. Since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Persian Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, he argued, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Saddam urged the Kuwaits to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but the Kuwaitis refused. Also to raise money for postwar reconstruction, Saddam pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices by cutting back oil production. Kuwait refused to cut production. In addition to refusing the request, Kuwait spearheaded the opposition in OPEC to the cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt. Meanwhile, Saddam showed disdain for the Kuwait-Iraq boundary line (actually imposed on Iraq by British imperial officials in 1922) because it cut Iraq off from the sea. One of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic divides was the belief that Kuwait had no right to even exist in the first place. For at least half a century, Iraqi nationalists were espousing emphatically the belief that Kuwait was historically an integral part of Iraq, and that Kuwait had only come into being through the maneuverings of British imperialism. The colossal extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves also intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of a mere 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; as an article of comparison, Saudi Arabia holds 25 percent. The Kuwaiti monarchy further angered Saddam by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered to be within its disputed border with Kuwait. Given that at the time Iraq was not regarded as a pariah state, Saddam was able to complain about the slant drilling to the U.S. State Department. Although this had continued for years, Saddam now needed oil money to stem a looming economic crisis. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq–Kuwait border. As Iraq–Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Ronald Reagan gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, 1990, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that while George H. W. Bush and James Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraq–Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Later, Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait. Although no reliable first-hand information on Saddam's appraisal of the situation exists, we can surmise from the prewar standpoint of the Iraqi leader and his interests and the conflicting prewar signals from Washington that the invasion was likely born out of Iraq's postwar debt problem and faltering attempts to gain the resources needed for postwar reconstruction, rebuild the devastated Iraqi economy, and stabilize the domestic political situation. ==The Persian Gulf War== [[Image:SaddamandCuellar.jpg.jpg|200px|thumb|With hours remaining before the war, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar met with Saddam Hussein to discuss the Security Council timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Kuwait.]] On August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed Kuwait, thus sparking an international crisis. The annexation of Kuwait gave Iraq, with its own substantial oil fields, control of twenty percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. The U.S. provided assistance to Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's seizure of the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August of 1990 the United States led a United Nations coalition that drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991. U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had had the most friendly relations with the Soviets. On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, are extremely concerned with stability in this region. The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's Crude oil#Pricing, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake; Kuwait controls approximately ten percent of the world's total crude oil reserve. [http://www.kuwait-info.org/Country_Profile/economy.html] President Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with the tough List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally of the U.S. during the Reagan administration, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time. Britain had a much closer historical relationship with Kuwait than did the U.S., dating back to British colonialism in the region. The country also benefitted from billions of dollars in Kuwaiti investment. Cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable. U.S. officials feared Iraqi retaliation against oil-rich Saudi Arabia, since the 1940s a close ally of Washington, for the Saudis' opposition to the invasion of Kuwait. Accordingly, the US and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including countries as diverse as Egypt, Syria and Czechoslovakia, deployed massive amounts of troops along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East. During the period of negotiations and threats following the invasion, Saddam focused renewed attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to withdraw his forces from Kuwait if Israel would relinquish the occupied territories in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S. and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians. The allies ultimately rejected any connection between the Kuwait crisis and Palestinian issues. Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. With unanimous backing from the Security Council, a U.S.-led coalition launched round-the-clock missile and aerial attacks on Iraq, beginning January 16, 1991. Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. A ground force comprised largely of US and British armored and infantry divisions ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February 1991 and occupied the southern portion of Iraq as far as the Euphrates. On March 6, 1991, referring to the conflict, Bush announced: "What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law." In the end, the over-manned and under-equipped Iraqi army proved unable to compete on the battlefield with the highly mobile coalition land forces and their overpowering air support. Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and casualties were estimated at approximately 20,000 according to U.S. data, with other sources pinning the number as high as 100,000. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to scrap all poison gas and germ weapons and allow UN observers to inspect the sites. UN trade sanctions would remain in effect until Iraq complied with all terms. ===Postwar aftermath=== Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the resulting postwar devastation, laid the groundwork for new rebellions within the country. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's government. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of the Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed. The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions beyond enforcing the Iraqi_no-fly_zones. U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi'ite revolution. Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or militarily from the Persian Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against America. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world. Saddam increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality, rape and prostitution, and the ritual phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the national flag. ==1991-2003== Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. launched a missile attack aimed at Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad June 26, 1993, citing evidence of repeated Iraqi violations of the Iraqi_no-fly_zones imposed after the Gulf War and for incursions into Kuwait. Some speculated that it was in retaliation for Iraq's alleged sponsorship of a plot to kill former President George H. W. Bush. The UN sanctions placed upon Iraq when it invaded Kuwait were not lifted, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, and humanitarian aid ameliorated the humanitarian crisis. UN organizations (such as UNICEF and the WHO) have estimated between 500,000 and 1.2 million deaths were caused by the sanctions, mostly in the under-5 age group [http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~progress/pamp_ed3.html]. Skeptics have estimated that only 350,000 excess deaths occurred between 1991 and 2000 [http://www.alternet.org/story/11933], and that many deaths were actually due to the bombing of Iraqi infrastructure. On December 9, 1996 the United Nations allowed Saddam's government to begin selling limited amounts of oil for food and medicine. Limited amounts of income from the United Nations started flowing into Iraq through the UN Oil for Food program. U.S. officials continued to accuse Saddam Hussein of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, refusing to give out adequate information on these weapons, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions and "no-fly zones." Isolated military strikes by U.S. and British forces continued on Iraq sporadically, the largest being Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Charges of Iraqi impediment to UN inspection of sites thought to contain illegal weapons was claimed as the reason for crises between 1997 and 1998, culminating in intensive U.S. and British missile strikes on Iraq, December 16-December 19, 1998. After two years of intermittent activity, U.S. and British warplanes struck harder at sites near Baghdad in February, 2001. Saddam's support base of Tikriti tribesmen, family members, and other supporters was divided after the war, and in the following years, contributing to the government's increasingly repressive and arbitrary nature. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam's sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. They likely had a leading hand when, in August 1995, two of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law (Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel), who held high positions in the Iraqi military, defected to Jordan. Both were killed after returning to Iraq the following February. Iraqi co-operation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent through much of the 1990s, and access to inspectors was ultimately blocked in 1998. It is speculated that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with, rather than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials. ==2003 invasion of Iraq== [[Image:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg|frame|left|On April 4, satellite channels worldwide broadcast footage of the besieged Iraqi leader touring the streets of his bombed capital. Smoke was emanating from oil fires in the distance. As U.S.-led ground troops were marching toward the capital, a smiling Saddam Hussein greeted cheering, chanting crowds in the streets of Baghdad.]] Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally. Bush's successor, U.S. President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), maintained sanctions and made occasional air strikes in the "Iraqi no-fly zones" or other restrictions, in the hope that Saddam would be overthrown by his many political enemies. The domestic political equation changed in the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, which bolstered the influence of the neoconservatism (United States) faction in the presidential administration and throughout Washington. In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush) spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government. Bush claimed, "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade." "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror," said Bush. (No evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to have been found.) As the war was looming on February 24, 2003, Saddam Hussein talked with CBS News anchor Dan Rather for more than three hours—his first interview with a U.S. reporter in over a decade. CBS aired the taped interview later that week. The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both narrowly failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April, Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on April 9, Saddam was nowhere to be found. ===Pursuit and capture=== ==== Pursuit ==== Saddam Hussein's whereabouts remained in question during the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting of the war. Various sightings of Saddam Hussein were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain. Saddam Hussein was placed at the top of the "U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis," and many of the other leaders of the Iraqi government were arrested, but extensive efforts to find him had little effect. His sons and political heirs, Uday Hussein and Qusai Hussein, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant. ==== Capture ==== On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, shortly afterwards, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, formally announced the capture of Saddam Hussein by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" He was captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. [http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.irq.saddam.operation/] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody. Some reported that Saddam Hussein had actually been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and then drugged before being placed in the spider hole to be found by American troops. [http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2003/12/saddam_captured.html] Saddam Hussein was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative." Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial have not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler." Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation. In March 2005 a former U.S. Marine who reportedly took part in the operation that apprehended Saddam Hussein alleged that the capture of Saddam Hussein was fictionalized by the U.S. military to make it look like he was found in a hole. The Marine further alleged that Saddam Hussein was actually found in a house and fired at the Marines with a pistol. [http://www.wokr13.tv/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=422B960A-26BA-4891-9E60-21C8818788D4] Saddam's lawyer, Khalil al-Duleimi, claims that Saddam also disagrees with the official U.S. explanation of his capture. [http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=5&u=/nm/20050427/ts_nm/iraq_saddam_dc] Some dispute the ex-Marine's allegations. [http://theneocon.blogspot.com/2005/03/ex-marine-alleges-saddam-story-was.html]. ==Trial== [[Image:TrialSaddam.jpg|thumb|220px|left|Saddam Hussein during his first appearance before the Iraqi Special Tribunal]] On June 30, 2004, Saddam Hussein (held in custody by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Baghdad), along with 11 senior Ba'athist officials, were handed over legally (though not physically, as there is at present no adequate Iraqi prison to hold them) to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Particular attention will be paid to his activities in violent campaigns against the Kurds in the north during the Iran-Iraq War, and against the Shiites in the south in 1991 and 1999 to put down revolts. The first legal hearing in Saddam's case was held before the Iraqi Special Tribunal on July 1, 2004. Broadcast later on Arabic and Western television networks, it was his first appearance in footage aired around the world since his capture by U.S. forces the previous December. The 67-year-old deposed Iraqi leader appeared surprisingly confident and defiant throughout the 26-minute hearing. Alternating between listening to and gesturing at the judge, Saddam questioned the legitimacy of the tribunal set up to try him. He called the court as a "play aimed at Bush's chances of winning the U.S. presidential election, 2004." He emphatically rejected charges against him. "This is all theatre. The real criminal is Bush," he stated. When asked by the judge to identify himself in his first appearance before an Iraqi judge, he answered, "I am Saddam Hussein al-Majid, the President of the Republic of Iraq." "I am still the president of the republic and the occupation cannot take that away," Saddam declared. Also during the arraignment, Saddam defended Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and referred to Kuwait's rulers as "dogs," which led to an admonishment from the judge for using coarse language in court (dogs are widely considered to be unclean animals in the Arab world). Later on July 1, Kuwait's information minister Abul-Hassan said crude language was "expected" of Saddam. "This is how he was raised," said the minister. [http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118085] Unlike the conservative monarchs in the area, which rule every other Arab nation in the Persian Gulf region, Saddam Hussein was born into a hard-scrabble, landless peasant family. Although no attorneys for Saddam were present at the July 1 hearing, his first wife, Sajida Talfah, has hired a multinational legal team of over 20 attorneys, headed by Jordanian Mohammad Rashdan and including Ayesha Qaddafi (Libya), Curtis Doebbler (United States), Emmanuel Ludot (France), Marc Henzelin (Switzerland) and Giovanni Di Stefano (United Kingdom). Toward the end of the hearing, the deposed president refused to sign the legal document confirming his understanding of the charges. It has been reported, that during a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld in 2005, Saddam refused an offer of release if he made a televised request to armed groups for a ceasefire with allied forces. [http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&month=May2005&file=World_News200505026563.xml] == Incarceration == On May 20, 2005, Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspapers ''The Sun'' of United Kingdom and ''New York Post'', printed photos of Saddam Hussein in his jail cell wearing only his underwear with the headline "Tyrant's in his pants" (''The Sun''). On the page three of ''The Sun'' which is traditionally preserved for topless "Page Three girls", Saddam Hussein was shown wearing a white robe while doing laundry by hand, with the caption: "a pathetic figure as he washed his trousers in jail. (...) Now he sits astride a plastic pink chair while he carries out the chores of a laundry maid." [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/politics/21saddam.html?ex=1270785600&en=37bef79604f97228&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland] These photos, said to be "provided by American military sources to undermine the Iraqi rebellion" [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/politics/21saddam.html?ex=1270785600&en=37bef79604f97228&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland], were officially not authorised, being qualified "a clear violation of D.O.D. directives, and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals" by Bush's deputy press secretary Trent Duffy. The U.S. military said that it would "aggressively investigate" how the photographs of Saddam Hussein in captivity were released [http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/20/saddam.photos/index.html]. ==Personal== Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage was to his first cousin Sajida Talfah, a former teacher, in 1963. This union with the eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and surrogate, produced two sons (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein) and three daughters, Rana Hussein, Raghad Hussein and Hala Hussein. Sajida was put under house arrest in early 1997, along with daughters Raghad and Rana, because they were suspected of being involved in an attempted assassination of Uday on December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, who was Sajida's brother and Saddam Hussein's boyhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity. Saddam Hussein also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumored to be his favorite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a son, Ali Hussein, by Samira. [[Image:SaddamandRana.jpg.jpg|thumb|200px|Saddam with his daughter, Rana Hussein]] In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel al Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel, defected to Jordan, taking their children with them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both of the Majid brothers were executed. Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known in the United States as "Chemical Ali," who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas in 1988. Ali is now in U.S. custody. As mentioned above, Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces. In August 2003 Saddam's daughters Raghad and Rana received sanctuary in Amman, Jordan, where they are staying with their nine children. That month, they spoke with CNN and the Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya in Amman. When asked about her father, Raghad told CNN, "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart." Asked if she wanted to give a message to her father, she said: "I love you and I miss you." Her sister Rana also remarked, "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us." ==Notes== Under his government, this date was his official date of birth. His real date of birth was never recorded, but it is believed to be a date between 1935 and 1939. This is because precise dates of birth were often not recorded in the region where he was born, and peasant children, such as Saddam, were often given a nominal birth date of July 1st, which is why his birth date is sometimes given as July 1, 1939. From Con Coughlin, ''Saddam The Secret Life'' Pan Books, 2003 (ISBN 0330393103).
''Saddam'' (pronounced "Sad-DAHM" or "Suh-DAM"; during the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush pronounced his name "SAD-dum"), his personal name, means ''the stubborn one'' or ''he who confronts'' in Arabic. ''Hussein'' is not a Family name in the Western sense but a patronymic; it is his father's given personal name; ''Abd al-Majid'' his grandfather's, and ''al-Tikriti'' means he was born and raised in (or near) Tikrit. He is commonly referred to as ''Saddam Hussein'', or ''Saddam'' for short. Some observers have argued that referring to the deposed Iraqi president as only ''Saddam'' may be derogatory and academically inappropriate, considering that Westerners often mispronounce the name "Saddám" as "Sádom," adding a religious rhetorical connotiation to "Sodom" — the city which according to the Bible was destroyed by God for its sin. Others claim that those who so argue are mistakenly assuming Hussein to be a family name. The ''New York Times'' regularly refers to him as "Mr. Hussein" [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?8br], while Encyclopædia Britannica prefers to address the man simply as ''Saddam'' [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=42559]. A full discussion can be found [http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/saddam_hussein.html here].
See PBS Frontline (2003), "The survival of Saddam: secrets of his life and leadership: interview with Saïd K. Aburish" at [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish2.html].
BBC News, October 16, 2000 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/974987.stm]
From Elisabeth Bumiller's interview of Jerrold M. Post, the founder of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA in the ''New York Times'' (May 15, 2004) on the importance of events during Saddam Hussein's youth. It can be read online at [http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/11/2004/05/#5225].
For further details see Khadduri, Majid. ''Socialist Iraq''. The Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C., 1978.
A free-access on-line archive relating to U.S.–Iraq relations in the 1980s is offered by ''The National Security Archive'' of the George Washington University. It can be read on line at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/]. The Mount Holyoke International Relations Program also provides a free-access document briefing on U.S.–Iraq relations (1904–present); this can be accessed on line at [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq.htm].
For a statement asserting the overriding importance of oil to U.S. national security and the U.S. economy, see, e.g., the declassified document, "Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf," The White House, National Security Directive (NSD 54), top secret, January 15, 1991. This document can be read on line in [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/ George Washington University's National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 21] at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/06-01.htm].
See Margaret Thatcher, ''The Downing Street Years'' (1979-1990), 817.
For further details see Globe and Mail Update, "Hussein does Baghdad walkabout" [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030404.wmain0404_5/BNPrint/International] Apr. 4, 2003.
The full text of Bush's 2002 State of the Union address can be read on line (BBC News) at [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1790537.stm].
Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein leading up to the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20 can be read on line (CBSNEWS.com) at [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/24/eveningnews/main541817.shtml].
For coverage of the postwar CNN and Al-Arabiya interviews with Saddam's daughters, see [http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-08-01-saddams-daughters_x.htm]
==See also== * Baghdad International Airport (formerly Saddam International Airport) * Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq * Human rights in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq * Operation Rockingham * Saddam Hussein in U.S. popular culture ==External links== *[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1100529.stm BBC Saddam Hussein profile] *[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/801925.cms Saddam a hero: Daughter] (''The Times of India'', August 3, 2004) *[http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report18.htm The Iraqi Resistance Site] (includes an archive of Saddam Hussein's recent audiotape recordings posted by the London-based "Free Arab Voice") *[http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/dec2003/a121403a.html American Forces Press Service announcement of Saddam Hussein's capture] *[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+iq0023) Saddam Hussein Biography] *[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/index.htm The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook] — Provided by the ''National Security Archive''. *[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm 1981: Israel bombs Baghdad nuclear reactor] *[http://www.strategypage.com/iraqwar/hamaza/default.asp Tammuz I, Iraqi nuclear reactor] *[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm Osiraq] *[http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0208/timeline.chemical.weapons/content.6.html CNN map of chemical weapon attacks against Iraqi Kurd population] *[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html Iraqi Scientist Reports on German, Other Help for Iraq Chemical Weapons Program] *[http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/27/sproject.irq.kurds/ CNN Report on Iraqi Kurds] *[http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.nirq.saddam.future/index.html Saddam to face Iraqi war crimes tribunal, and some of his comments] *[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SADDAMS_GUARDS?SITE=CARDB&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME Saddam Insists He's Still Iraq President] News From The Associated Press 1937 births Iraqi heads of government Iraqi heads of state Members of Saddam Hussein's family U.S.-Iraqi relations Field Marshals simple:Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 1 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 2 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 3 | /Archive 4 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 5 | Talk:Saddam Hussein/Archive 6 Talk:Saddam Hussein/naming contains the collected discussion on the naming of Saddam Hussein. Please do not attempt to change the use of Saddam's name in this article without reading and understanding the archived discussion. Thank you. The archive includes the following issues: * "Saddam" vs "Hussein" vs "Saddam Hussein" as the short form of the name in the article. * Whether there should be some form of disclaimer regards which is "correct" on the article * Transliterations: Husayn vs Hussain == Flawed intro == The intro contains the following sentence: "While he remained a popular hero among many disaffected Arabs for standing up to the West and for his staunch support for the Palestinians,4 the United States continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Persian Gulf War." I have a few problems with this. #1. I do not believe he was a hero to "many" Arabs, rather a hero to "some" Arabs. This is because many, many Arabs hate him with a true passion, probably because Saddam has killed more Arabs than any single person in modern history (last few hundred years). The number of Palestinians who may have liked Saddam and much smaller than the Arabs of southern Iraq who hate him. :No. See the citation that goes along with the sentence. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #2. Saddam’s support for the Palestinians has always been minor, and only increased in the last few years by his donations of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, aka, support for terrorism. :Support for the Palestinian cause had consistently been a major part of his brand of Ba'aathism, foreign policy, and personality cult, and this did not go unnoticed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Again see the citation that goes along with the sentence bringing up the Palestinians. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #3. The sentence begins by showing why some/many Arabs supported Saddam, then ends by saying the US viewed him with deep suspicion. This is unbalanced. There needs to be a reason to explain why the US viewed him with suspicion, especially considering there is an explanation of why Arabs like him. By omitting this reason, one can easily infer that the suspicion was because of his support for the Palestinians, and this is false. The US viewed him with suspicion because he was not upholding the cease-fire agreement, violating the UN resolutions, deceiving the weapons inspectors, and attempted to assassinate George Bush Sr. during a visit to Kuwait. :Why the U.S. viewed him with suspicion is obvious. And listing is inappropriate in the intro. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) #4. I don't think the Palestinian issue deserves to be in the introduction, because it is so minor. :Again, the Palestinain problem was major aspect of his ideology and foreign policy. It must be mentioned in the intro. User:172 13:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Links with French political circles == Shouldn't "cementing close ties with French political and business circles" be replaced by "cementing close ties with French business and conservative political circles"? As far as I know, privilegied relationships with African or Middle-Eastern strong-man regimes is a trademark of the "old Gaullist guard" (Charles Pasqua etc.). I don't know of any similar relationships with left-wing political circles. User:David.Monniaux 11:04, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Good point. Neither do I. I would not object to the change proposed above. User:172 11:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Ok, I changed the sentence. User:David.Monniaux 13:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) ''Saddam was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and was captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003. The Iraqi Interim Government subsequently charged him with crimes against humanity.'' While not incorrect, this wording lends the impression that immediately following his capture he was handed over to a sovereign Iraqi government, which had intended to put him on trial. This was not the case, with the official handover of sovereignty not having taken place and his first court appearance still about half a year away. I changed the wording. User:172 13:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) =="Bemused thoughts" (conspiracy theory about Saddam, Israel, and Wikipedia)== Just to make you all aware:
>
"''Why are there so many people that try to discount the Marine's story without using logic? I accept the possibility his story might be false, can you accept the possibility it could be true?''"
Neither politics nor ideology enters the formation of my opinion on this. I am not a conservative deriding this story as "anti-American," or whatever. Rabeh's story may be fact or it may not. But the balance of evidence is strongly against him--that is, nobody but him has made this claim, and he has provided no proof, only allegations--and I believe that until corroboration can be found, his story should be treated with great caution. User:Mr. Billion 21:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) :The balance of proof is not against Rabeh's allegations, the word of a U.S. Marine grunt is much more highly respected than all neo-cons at the pentagon's. I remember reading a "conspiracy" theory a number of months ago that stated the real number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq was closer to 5,000 than 1,500, this might explain the apparent discrepancy of not having a Sudanese Marine killed during the real Saddam capture. Hopefully whatever the truth is it comes out fully someday. It should also be noted the manner in which these conservative bloggers are attacking Rabeh's claims, they aren't trying to debunk his arguments logically, they are just trying to trick people into believing what they want them to believe (which likely causes long term psychological harm since people end up thinking less). User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 17:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) "''The balance of proof is not against Rabeh's allegations''"
......... User:Mr. Billion 20:29, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) :huh? User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 23:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) : "the word of a U.S. Marine grunt is much more highly respected than all neo-cons at the pentagon's" You just showed yourself to be biased and ignorant, congradulations, we will now ignore you. (anonymous editor) ::Thanks for attacking me personally rather than debating logically. FYI: opinion and POV is acceptable on talk pages. I am actually trying to work towards removing subtle POV and opinion from this article. You also fail to note my statement above was in response to a statement that questioned a U.S. Marine's integrity (so you are attacking me for defending a Marine's integrity, oh the irony by the subtle misdirection loving POV pushers). Let me state for the record that even though you are apparently misguided I won't ignore you. User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 16:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC) I'm just glad that that jackass 172 is done, maybe there can be real progress on the article now, rather than bullshit about how Saddam "never fowgott" the instability which FORCED THE POOR LAD to torture and mutilate the Shi'a and Kurdish populace. It was for unity! User:Trey Stone 09:11, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC) Regarding the asinine claims of a supposed Marine, why is this unsubstaniatied claim given any mention here? (From [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=12.222.234.45 12.222.234.45]) ==Weapons inspections== If I'm not mistaken Saddam accused the US of using weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq. This was later backed up by one of the weapons inspectors who admitted he was doing so for the US. I don't see this anywhere in the article. Although this was probably not the primary reason he rejected weapons inspectors, surely it's inclusion is worthy? Also, I think the bit about why Saddam rejected inspectors should also include the theory that it may have been because he was arrogant and hated what he regarded as an invasion of his country by the inspectors and not just the theory that he wanted to remain seen as a threat ** Since we are speculating about motives, consider this, President Bush wanted to invade Iraq, but needed "justification". President Bush gets the weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq, leaks the information to Saddam, Saddam reacts, Bush gets his justification and the rest is history. More or less what each President has done since WWII to get their "justification". == Fluctuating Intro == I have added a truthful and up to date summaried appraisal to Saddam Hussein. It keeps being reverted to the previous version which began "Saddam Hussein was a rising star". Sddam Hussein came to power by killing his opponents, and remained in power by killing his opponents. The fact that there is also only a cursory mention of the Special Tribunal is ridiculous. I have now directly linked a summary of the IST's task with the article. Please do not alter the intro backwards again! :The old intro calls him a rising star within the Baath Party, which means nothing more than he was rising up the party ranks in the 1960s and early 1970s. Is this untrue? Of course it is not. Your complaint against the old intro is dubious. Futher, by managing to fit in as many emotive terms as possible into your version, we have a flagrant violation of Wikipedia:Neutral Point of View. User:Chaebol 19:33, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Deletion == A large slice of text was deleted. Is this deliberate, or is it unpatrolled vandalism? User:Jfdwolff | User_talk:Jfdwolff 16:00, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC) == This is not Saddam Hussein == http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg It's a double. I recall this video footage fooled BBC correspondant Ragi Omar at the time, but it is simply not Saddam. I am a professional artist who works a lot reproducing faces from photos and I can spot the difference a mile off. It's a mediocre double. Just thought I would let you know. == Fn 2 "Saddam" == According to the article, Britannica (since when do we care what Britannica thinks?) uses "Saddam", and links to an article (header) which appears to corroborate this. But the CBC article that "explains it all" says: "Following this convention, then, "Hussein" would appear to stand out as the obvious choice, and a few large papers have embraced it, including the Globe and Mail, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. It's also the path taken by some encyclopedias, including Britannica and Columbia." Hence the judgement that Saddam is more appropriate than Hussein, simply because its informally popular needs some explanation. -User:Stevertigo|User_talk:Stevertigo 00:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC) It isn't because it is "informally popular". It is because it is factually correct. Saddam is what we would regard as a surname. For some reason some US sources in the 2nd Gulf War bizarrely began to use ''Hussein'' (unlike in the rest of the world, and indeed in the US media in the 1st Gulf War). Internationally, the US use of Hussein as a surname is regarded at best as a joke, at worst at worst as an example of "illiterate dumbing down" (comment by ex-US diplomat on a radio show in Ireland a year ago). Fear''ÉIREANN''\user_talk:Jtdirl 01:05, 17 May 2005 (UTC) == Just one minor comment on the article == Under the heading 2003 invasion of Iraq the article (19:06, May 16, 2005) states "In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush) spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq". I know the phrase is commonly quoted "axis of evil"; but I seem to recall once hearing in a news broadcast that actually that is a misquote, and what Bush actually said was "axis of hatred". Just thought I'd raise this point. Perhaps someone has archives of news reports at the time, and can check up on this - assuming it is important enough that is. User:Polsequ95 23:54, May 16, 2005 (UTC) :Check out Axis of evil. User:DopefishJustin User talk:DopefishJustin 15:45, May 24, 2005 (UTC) == The photo abuse == The leak of Saddam's "IN HIS PANTS" pictures (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/20/saddam.photos/index.html), in my opinion, has nothing to do with tabloids. Rupert Murdoch may want to buy and print the pictures. But if the U.S. keeps the pictures managed, Rupert Murdoch gets nothing. It's a jail. You can't send your Paparazzi to the jail to take these pictures. The U.S. government shall be held responsible for the leak. This is an important issue. -- User:Toytoy 08:11, May 24, 2005 (UTC) : Yet there should be a way to densify the information a little bit. With three paragraphs, this part put the article off-balance; it should be one paragraph at most... User:Rama 08:28, 24 May 2005 (UTC) :: Be bold! -- User:Toytoy 09:31, May 24, 2005 (UTC) == Archaeology of rumor == The following text was inserted by [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=12.74.187.234 12.74.187.234] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=209.247.222.98 209.247.222.98] to replace "(No evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears to have been found)" : ''A Legal decision by Judge Harold Baer, a Clinton nominee, in the 1st Circuit Court in Manhattan legally establishes proof of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. The civil trial included vast amounts of evidence including testimony about a hjacking school at Salman Pak and testimony from Bill Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey. [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/08/1052280380297.html]'' Even Dick Cheney claimed last September never to have suggested a link between Iraq and 9/11. The edit's double reference to Clinton appears to be a political jab. I bet that Mr. Bush would have liked to have seen these "vast amounts of evidence" to which Baer was privy. If that were the case, he probably could have based his case for war on more sound footing than nonexistent WMD and the possibility that bin Laden and Hussein concievably ''could'' work together. It turns out, they've been working together all along! I'll quote somebody else's comments on this issue: ''First, because Iraq didn't show up to defend the case, the only issue Judge Baer decided was whether there was enough evidence to send the case to a jury, not whether the facts actually support a finding of Iraqi involvement. That is an extremely low standard under the law and, more importantly, doesn't involve any evaluation of credibility, any cross-examination, etc. There is no finding at all that Iraq was behind the attacks, just a finding that the plaintiffs met the bare minimum threshhold to allow a case to go forward.'' [http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/2004/05/13.html] The judge criticized the arguments as based on "classical hearsay" but said that the case was technically sufficient, "albeit barely." [http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/5-09-03/discussion.cgi.53.html] Part of the plaintiffs' case was based on the Czech report of a supposed Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer. Czech intelligence has since retracted that report and neither the CIA nor FBI now believe that the meeting ever happened. Actually, just go look at Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks. First entry. Bin Laden considered Hussein an "infidel" and supported anti-Saddam islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mohammed Atta considered Hussein "an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East," et cetera et cetera. There seems to be a continuing irrational fixation on Iraq. It's bewildering that some people choose to grasp at weak or nonexistent links to Iraq when the countries to which al Qaeda is tied are so obvious. Ignored in the Iraq obsession is the overt and active support or strong links to al Qaeda from other nations such as (of course) Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan, where bin Laden based his operations for years in the 1990s at the invitation of Hassan al Turabi, a Sudanese leader. ''The country that started this [pattern of Islamic extremism], Iran, is about to turn around, 180 degrees. We ought to be focused on that. The father of extremism, the home of the ayatollah -- the young people are ready to throw out the mullahs and turn around, become a secular society and throw off these ideas of extremism. That is more important and critical. They're the ones that funded Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. That ought to be a focus. And I can give you many, many more before you get down to Saddam and Iraq.'' :--[http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html General Anthony Zinni] I don't think that the assertions of an Iraqi link are accurate and I wish people would stop digging up discredited arguments from years ago. I'm restoring the previous text. User:Mr. Billion 01:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Yes, since Iraq didn't show up to defend itself the best the anon editor could argue is that the allegation went "uncontested", which is hardly a determination of fact or proof. And don't forget about the 1980s links between the USA and proto Al Qaeda. User:Zen-master User talk:Zen-master 03:53, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Saddam Hussein
#REDIRECT User:SH
Saddam Hussein
Discussion of the name change from "Saddam Hussein" to SH" follows. See user talk:SH for other Talk ----- Thank you for improving the entries for Palestinian views of the peace process and Circumcision. Please keep up the good work. --User:Zippy 09:04, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) Discussion of whether SH is a vandal or not below [problem user] User:Saddam Hussein copied the Saddam Hussein page into his user page. He still haven't edited anything for now. User:At18 16:55, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC) : since this time, user has made a number of helpful minor corrections to Palestinian views of the peace process, circumcision, weapons of mass destruction, and about a dozen other articles. --User:Zippy 06:00, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- If it turns out that this person is not infact Saddam Hussein, and the user does some serious vandalism, there is a possibility that Saddam Hussein might have grounds for complaint. I think we should at least require that she/he provide a real mailing address or phone-number. -- User:Cimon avaro 07:14, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC) :GPS coordinates perhaps?User:Ark30inf 07:19, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC) : O. A celebrity. Wee. --User:Menchi 08:41, Aug 17, 2003 (UTC) You know, famous people do not have a monolopy on their name! There are probably at least tens of Saddam Husseins in the world. Before WW2 I'm sure there were numerous Adolf Hitlers. Don't jump on this guy for offensive user name or whatever before you know for sure. User:Cgs 11:26, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC). :::Not to mention a bunch of Jesuses running around in Spain. - User:Sigg3.net 15:23, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::Ahem. Just as a small hint, why not check his userpage at User:Saddam Hussein? I know that Saddam Hussein is kind of like George Adams in the relative commonness department. But the full name given on the userpage is the whole rigamarole including the al-tikriti etc. stuff. And there is a pretty unmistakable photograph. In fact it is the article from wikipedia, with even the other-language links intact. While I am not sure that the users name is not Saddam Hussein; I am convinced that anyone really named Saddam Hussein would not fault us for being pointedly sceptical. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick ::: Yeah, ok. I didn't look at the edit history. But still, keep it in mind for the future. User:Cgs 15:09, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC). ---- Someone wrote on this user page: ''Note: this user is probably not Saddam Hussein'' It must be the funniest thing I read on Wikipedia for a long time :-) User:At18 18:21, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC) : Glad to be of service. :) User:MyRedDice 19:31, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- I think this is User:Paektu. User:Mbecker 21:21, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC) Dear Saddam. Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia! We just have a few questions to ask you. If you wouldn't mind, please drop by your local American military base for a quick chat, ok? We have many offices in your local to serve you better! Thanks! ;-) User:RK ---- Your corrections are appriciated. User:Mbecker 22:28, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC) ---- We have at present no policy on use of real or famous people's names as userids. There is one I believe against overtly politically motivated or inflammatory names. I think there's no issue though legally, as, no one believes that User:Saddam_Hussein is actually the Saddam Hussein on the news. Do they? If they did, it could become grounds for a defamation action. Who knows who could actually go to a court room though pretending to represent Saddam? At least without a bomb landing on it, or getting their face added to a deck of playing cards. User:EntmootsOfTrolls ---- Dear Saddam, as a tyrant and dictator (I am assuming you are Mr. S. Hussein, former CIA guy, totalitarian leader, etc., etc., if I am wrong then please ignore any comments that might be directed to your namesake) you are perhaps not familiar with the terminology used in Canadian constitutional history. There is in fact a word called patriation that we Canadians use to talk about the time when our constitution was given to us by the Queen, similar to what George W. Bush did for the Iraqi people when he deposed you, eh? User:Alex756 ---- Users should be able to do what they want with their personal user pages. Reverting this page because "an encyclopedia is not a joke" is misguided - a user page is not an encyclopedia entry. It's a place for the user to describe themselves or their interests, or even to experiment with editing wiki pages. It is not, in my opinion, a place for strong editor attention. --User:Zippy 08:58, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) : It has been established that there are limits to what an editor can do with their own pages. The issue here, however, is mostly the offending account name, not the page itself. User:Daniel Quinlan 01:30, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC) :: Actually, there was an edit war over the content of Saddam Hussein's user page. My comment was directed at that edit war. --User:Zippy 18:22, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC) == Offensive username == User:Saddam Huss