Good morning viewers,
Today is December 13
LOVE Quote of the Day - Dec. 13
"No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."
~ Francois Mauriac
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937– 30 December 2006) was the fifth
President of
Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the
Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and it's regional organisation
Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused a mix of
Arab nationalism and
Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized
oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the
Iran–Iraq War, the
Gulf War and UN sanctionsThrough the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with
Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
Saddam suppressed several movements, particularly
Shi'a and
Kurdish movements seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively.
[citation needed] Saddam maintained power during the
Iran–Iraq War of 1980 through 1988. In 1990 he invaded and looted
Kuwait. An international coalition came to free Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991, but did not end Saddam's rule. Whereas some venerated him for his aggressive stance against
Israel, including firing missiles at Israeli targets, he was widely condemned for the brutality of his dictatorship.
In March 2003, a coalition of countries led by the U.S. and U.K.
invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, after
U.S. President George W. Bush accused him of possessing
weapons of mass destruction and having
ties to al-Qaeda. Saddam's Ba'ath party was disbanded and the nation made a transition to a democratic system. Following his capture on 13 December 2003 (in
Operation Red Dawn), the
trial of Saddam took place under the
Iraqi interim government. On 5 November 2006, he was convicted of charges related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi
Shi'ites and was sentenced to death by
hanging. The
execution of Saddam Hussein was carried out on 30 December 2006.
Operation Red Dawn was the U.S.
military operation conducted on 13 December 2003 in the town of
ad-Dawr, Iraq, near
Tikrit, that captured Iraq President
Saddam Hussein, ending
rumours of his death. The operation was named after the 1984 film
Red Dawn. The mission was assigned to the 1st
Brigade Combat Team of the
4th Infantry Division, commanded by Major. Gen
Raymond Odierno and led by Col.
James Hickey of the 4th Infantry Division, with joint operations
Task Force 121 - an elite and covert joint special operations team.
They searched two sites, "Wolverine 1" and "Wolverine 2," outside the town of ad-Dawr, but did not find Saddam Hussein. A continued search between the two sites discovered him in a "
spider hole" hide out at 20:30hrs local Iraqi time. Despite being armed with a pistol and an
AK-47 assault rifle, and provisioned with US$750,000
in cash, Saddam did not resist capture.
The capture was dramatized in the final episode of
House of Saddam.
Iran–Iraq War
In early 1979, Iran's Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the
Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the
Ayatollah 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 against the Iranian Government, whom Saddam tolerated. However, when Khomeini began to urge the Shi'ites there to overthrow Saddam and under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978 to France. However this turned out to be an imminent failure and a political catalyst, for Khomeini had access to more media connections and also collaborated with a much larger Iranian community under his support whom he used to his advantage.
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. During this period, Saddam Hussein publicly maintained that it was in Iraq's interest not to engage with Iran, and that it was in the interests of both nations to maintain peaceful relations. However, in a private meeting with
Salah Omar Al-Ali, Iraq's permanent ambassador to
the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months. Later (probably to appeal for support from the United States and most Western nations), he would make toppling the Islamic government one of his intentions as well. Iraq invaded Iran, first attacking
Mehrabad Airport of
Tehran and then entering the oil-rich Iranian land of
Khuzestan, which also has a sizable Arab minority, on 22 September 1980 and declared it a new province of Iraq. With the support of the Arab states, the United States, and Europe, and heavily financed by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein had become "the defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary Iran. The only exception was The Soviet Union, who initially refused to supply Iraq on the basis of Neutrality in the conflict, although in his memoirs,
Mikhail Gorbachev claimed that
Leonid Brezhnev refused to aid Saddam over infuriation of Saddam's treatment of Iraqi Communists. Consequently, many viewed Iraq as "an agent of the civilized world".The blatant disregard of international law and violations of international borders were ignored. Instead Iraq received economic and military support from its allies, who conveniently overlooked Saddam's use of chemical warfare against the Kurds and the Iranians and Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from
human wave attacks by Iran. By 1982, Iraq was on the defensive and looking for ways to end the war.
At this point, Saddam asked his ministers for candid advice. Health Minister
Dr. Riyadh Ibrahim suggested that Saddam temporarily step down to promote peace negotiations. Initially, Saddam Hussein appeared to take in this opinion as part of his cabinet democracy. A few weeks later, Dr. Ibrahim was sacked when held responsible for a fatal incident in an Iraqi hospital where a patient died from intravenous administration of the wrong concentration of potassium supplement.
Dr. Ibrahim was arrested a few days after he started his new life as a sacked Minister. He was known to have publicly declared before that arrest that he was "glad that he got away alive." Pieces of Ibrahim's dismembered body were delivered to his wife the next day.
Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive
wars of attrition of the twentieth century. During the war, Iraq used
chemical weapons against Iranian forces fighting on the southern front and Kurdish separatists who were attempting to open up a northern front in Iraq with the help of Iran. These chemical weapons were developed by Iraq from materials and technology supplied primarily by
West German companies as well as the
Reagan administration of the
United States which also supplied Iraq with "satellite photos showing Iranian deployments" and advised Hussein to bomb civilian targets in
Tehran and other Iranian cities. France sold 25 billion dollars worth arms to Saddam.
Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support during the war, particularly after Iraq's oil industry severely suffered at the hands of the
Iranian navy in the
Persian Gulf. Iraq successfully gained some military and financial aid, as well as diplomatic and moral support, from the Soviet Union, China, France, and the United States, which together feared the prospects of the expansion of revolutionary Iran's influence in the region. The Iranians, demanding that the international community should force Iraq to pay war reparations to Iran, refused any suggestions for a cease-fire. Despite several
calls for a ceasefire by the
United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988.
On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of
Halabja was attacked with a mix of
mustard gas and
nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more. (
see Halabja poison gas attack) The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988
al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish
peshmerga rebel forces. The United States now maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack which some including the U.S. supported until several years later. (See also
Halabja poison gas attack.)
The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties with estimates of up to one million dead. Neither side had achieved what they had originally desired and at the borders were left nearly unchanged. The southern, oil rich and prosperous Khuzestan and Basra area (the main focus of the war, and the primary source of their economies) were almost completely destroyed and were left at the pre 1979 border, while Iran managed to make some small gains on its borders in the Northern Kurdish area. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins.
Saddam borrowed tens of billions of dollars from other Arab states and a few billions from elsewhere during the 1980s to fight Iran, mainly to prevent the expansion of Shiite radicalism. However, this had proven to completely backfire both on Iraq and on the part of the Arab states, for Khomeini was widely perceived as a hero for managing to defend Iran and maintain the war with little foreign support against the heavily backed Iraq and only managed to boost Islamic radicalism not only within the Arab states, but within Iraq itself, creating new tensions between the Sunni Ba'ath Party and the majority Shiite population. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and internal resistance, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction.
The international community, especially the U.S., continued to view Saddam as a bellicose tyrant who was a threat to the stability of the region. After the
September 11 attacks,
Vladimir Putin began to tell the United States that Iraq was preparing terrorist attacks against the United States. In his January 2002
state of the union address to Congress, President
George W. Bush spoke of an "
axis of evil" consisting of
Iran, North Korea, and
Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government, because of the threat of its weapons of mass destruction. Bush stated that "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."
[71][72] Saddam Hussein claimed that he falsely led the world to believe Iraq possessed nuclear weapons in order to appear strong against Iran
With war looming on 24 February 2003, Saddam Hussein took part in
an interview with
CBS News reporter
Dan Rather. Talking for more than three hours, he expressed a wish to have a live televised debate with
George W. Bush, which was declined. It was 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 U.S.-led
2003 invasion of Iraq on 20 March. By the beginning of April, U.S.-led 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 U.S-led forces on 9 April, marked symbolically by the
toppling of his statue by
iconoclasts, Saddam was nowhere to be found.
Incarceration and trial
In April 2003, Saddam'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 were reported in the weeks following the war, but none was authenticated. At various times Saddam released audio tapes promoting popular resistance to his ousting.
Saddam was placed at the top of the U.S. list of "
most-wanted Iraqis". In July 2003, his sons
Uday and
Qusay and 14-year-old grandson
Mustapha were killed in a three-hourgunfight with U.S. forces.
On 13 December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces at a farmhouse in
ad-Dawr near Tikrit in a hole in
Operation Red Dawn. Following his capture on 13 December Saddam was transported to a U.S. base near Tikrit, and later taken to the U.S. base near Baghdad. The day after his capture he was reportedly visited by longtime opponents such as
Ahmed Chalabi On 14 December 2003, U.S. administrator in Iraq
L. Paul Bremer confirmed that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured at a farmhouse in
ad-Dawr near Tikrit. Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.
Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer than his familiar appearance. He was described by U.S. officials as being in good health. Bremer reported plans to put Saddam on trial, but claimed that the details of such a trial had not yet been determined. Iraqis and Americans who spoke with Saddam after his capture generally reported that he remained self-assured, describing himself as a "firm, but just leader.
British tabloid newspaper
The Sun posted a picture of Saddam wearing white briefs on the front cover of a newspaper. Other photographs inside the paper show Saddam washing his trousers, shuffling, and sleeping. The
United States Government stated that it considers the release of the pictures a violation of the
Geneva Convention, and that it would investigate the photographs. During this period
Hussein was interrogated by FBI agent
George Piro
The guards at the Baghdad detention facility called their prisoner "Vic," and let him plant a little garden near his cell. The nickname and the garden are among the details about the former Iraqi leader that emerged during a 27 March 2008 tour of prison of the
Baghdad cell where Saddam slept, bathed, and kept a journal in the final days before his execution.
