Saddam Undone By Blunders And Brutality

Iraqi Dictator's Ruthlessness Contributed To His Downfall, As Did Decision To Attack Iran, Invade Kuwait

(CBS/AP)  Within days of taking power, Saddam Hussein summoned about 400 top officials and announced he had uncovered a plot against the ruling party. The conspirators, he said, were in that very room.

As the 42-year-old Saddam coolly puffed on a cigar, names of the supposed plotters were read out. As each name was called, secret police led them away. Twenty-two people were executed. To make sure Iraqis got the word, Saddam videotaped the entire proceeding and distributed copies across the country.

The plot claim was a lie. But in a few terrifying minutes on July 22, 1979, Saddam eliminated his potential rivals, consolidating the power he wielded until the Americans and their allies drove him from office a generation later.

Saddam, who was hanged Saturday at age 69, ruled Iraq with singular ruthlessness. No one was safe. His two sons-in-law were killed on Saddam's orders after they defected to Jordan but returned in 1996 after receiving guarantees of safety.

Such brutality kept him in power through war with Iran, defeat in Kuwait, rebellions by northern Kurds and southern Shiite Muslims, international sanctions, plots and conspiracies.

In the end, however, brutality was his undoing. Trusting few except kin, Saddam surrounded himself with sycophants, selected for loyalty rather than intellect and ability.

And when he was forced out in April 2003, he left a country impoverished — despite vast oil wealth — and roiling with long suppressed ethnic and sectarian hatred.

He ended up dragged from a hole by American soldiers in December 2001, bearded, disheveled and with his arms in the air.

Image and illusion were important tools for Saddam.

He sought to build an image as an all-wise, all-powerful champion of the Arab nation. His model was the great 12th century warrior Saladin. He promoted the illusion of a powerful Iraq — with the world's fourth largest army and weapons of terrible destruction.

Yet it was all hollow. His army crumbled when confronted by the Americans and their allies in Kuwait in 1991.

And in 2003, his capital fell to a single U.S. brigade task force.

Saddam's weapons of mass destruction proved a bluff to keep the Iranians, the Syrians, the Israelis — and the Americans — at bay.

He squandered vast sums on opulent palaces — a universe from the harsh poverty into which he was born on April 28, 1937, in the village of Ouja near Tikrit. His father died or disappeared before he was born. His stepfather treated Saddam harshly.

The young Saddam ran away as a boy and lived with his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, a stridently anti-British, anti-Semitic man whose daughter, Sajida, would become Saddam's wife.

Under his uncle's influence, Saddam joined the Baath Party, a radical, secular Arab nationalist organization, at age 20. A year later, he fled to Egypt after taking part in an attempt to assassinate the country's ruler, Gen. Abdul-Karim Qassim, and was sentenced to death in absentia.

Saddam returned four years later after Qassim was overthrown by the Baath. But the Baath leadership was itself ousted within eight months and Saddam was imprisoned. He escaped in 1967 and took charge of the underground Baath party's secret internal security organization.

He swore he would never tolerate the internal dissent that he blamed for the party losing power.

In July 1968, Baath returned to power under the leadership of Gen. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who appointed Saddam, his cousin, as his deputy. Saddam systematically purged key party figures, deported thousands of Shiites of Iranian origin, supervised the state takeover of Iraq's oil industry, land reform and modernization.

Al-Bakr decided in 1979 to seek unity with neighboring Syria, whose president would become al-Bakr's deputy, and Saddam would be marginalized. Saddam forced his cousin to resign — and then purged his rivals. Hundreds in the party and army were executed.

Saddam then turned his attention to the country's Shiite majority, whose clerical leaders had long opposed his secular policies. Saddam's fears of a Shiite challenge rose after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Shiite-dominated Iran in 1979.

On Sept. 22, 1980, Iraqi troops crossed the Iranian border, launching a war that would last eight years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, and devastate Saddam's plans to transform Iraq into a developed, prosperous country.

After the Iranians counterattacked, Saddam turned to the United States, France and Britain for weapons, which those countries gladly sold him to prevent an outright Iranian victory. They turned a blind eye when Saddam ruthlessly struck against Iraqi Kurds, who lived in the border area and were dealing secretly with the Iranians.

An estimated 5,000 Kurds died in a chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja in March 1988. The United States suggested at the time that the Iranians might have been responsible.

Only two years after making peace with Iran, Saddam invaded Kuwait, whose rulers had refused to forgive Iraq's war debt and opposed increases in oil prices that Iraq desperately needed to recover from the conflict with Iran.

The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition attacked. On Iraqi radio on Jan. 17, 1991, Saddam predicted "the mother of all battles."

But the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait. The 1991 war triggered uprisings among Iraq's Shiites, brutally crushed by Saddam, and the Kurds, who carved out a self-ruled area under U.S. and British air cover.

In April 1990, Saddam hinted that he had secret super-weapons and declared: "By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel." During the Gulf War he fired Scud missiles into Israel, and during the Palestinian uprising a decade later he paid cash grants to families of suicide bombers.

The U.N. sanctions remained in effect until his regime collapsed in 2003, devastating Iraq's economy and impoverishing a people who had been among the most prosperous in the Middle East.

The Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. focused attention on Saddam as a sponsor of terrorism. His refusal to meet U.N. demands for full disclosure of his illegal weapons program provided a justification for war.

An American-led force invaded on March 20, 2003. Within three weeks, Iraq's army had collapsed. Saddam was captured the following December.

As he went on trial in October 2005, his country engulfed in an anti-American insurgency, Saddam tried to use the proceeding to rail against the U.S. presence in Iraq in hopes of winning the approval of history if not an acquittal. But as trial dragged on, his manner calmed as he realized the inevitability of conviction and the death sentence that followed.

[mick7744]

RE: prelgovisk's question, 'What Democratic candidate would have got (gotten) Saddam caught (captured) convicted and hung (hanged)?'

'Gore?'

No...certainly not Gore, prelgovisk. While chickenhawk Bush was first dodging the draft, then avoiding flight physicals because they involved drug tests, Al Gore was running a rifle company in Vietnam. He would have been much too familiar with the realities of combat to involve his country in such a foolhardy, but profitable venture for some. That kind of blunder required a swaggering, gutless moron like George W. Bush to bring it about.

Capturing Saddam meant taking dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers off their regular duties guarding Halliburton vehicles to find him (which is probably why it took nine months instead of nine days...they couldn't spare the manpower)

Prosecuting and executing him in the shoddy, furtive manner it was done has doubtless insured that still more years and more American lives and billions of tax dollars that should be used to benefit ordinary Americans will be squandered on what is rapidly becoming apparent is nothing more than a fat-cat oil deal.

No...no Democratic candidate could ever have done what Bush did.

[feelfree1]

thomderr,

"Do the Iraqi people not have a right to execute a criminal, whether or not he is high - profile?"

Well there seems to be a lot of disagreement on that issue. Some people think that the "thou shalt not kill" motto is pretty important, and would disagree with your proposal.

At any rate, a murder that comes as a result of a mock-trial in an illegitimate kangaroo court, a court established by criminal invaders no less, can hardly be considered as anything representing "justice", merely rationalized murder done for political purposes.

Leave it to the Bush Uber-losers to transform a petty tyrant into a martyr and a victim.

[thomderr]

Why must everything be a conspiracy?

Do the Iraqi people not have a right to execute a criminal, whether or not he is high - profile?

Allow the country to move on, albeit a turbulent past that must be overcome.

[feelfree1]

friendlyg,

Re: "bush has not been charged or convicted of a crime"

Not yet, but he knows full well that his days are numbered. Many top WWII Nazi leaders were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Their crimes bear remarkable similarities to those committed by the Bush League officials.

Their time is nearly up, and the whole world will rejoice when they are finally brought to justice!

[friendlyg]

Concerned8 , bush has not been charged or convicted of a crime, I suggest you take all that ridiculous blather and channel it into getting the next president of your choice elected.

Saddam was directly responsible for millions of murders.

Go on the net and find the films of his shock troops amputating hands, tongues and heads... of them throwing handcuffed victims off the roofs of tall buildings...

you are a pathetic example of the new "liberal", not liberal in any real sense of the word, actually closer to a fascist than anything else.

get a clue.

[friendlyg]

Concerned8 , you are a victim of liberal media hype.

Moral relativism, look it up honey.

[prelgovisk]

A lot of sour grapes and some bitter ones, all trying to throw a shadow on a something no Democratic candidate could have or would have accomplished.

Which Democratic candidate would have got Saddam caught, convicted and hung?

Gore?

No, to busy inventing the Internet, practicing his sighing, asking pollsters about the impact of his beard or choosing just the right person to tell him which sweater he should wear to important events.

None of those events would have been the removal of Saddam from power, or his being brought to justice.

A lot of bitter, dark words come from people who never brought light to anyone. The world is a sweeter and brighter place for us today because Saddam has been brought to justice.

[rharrin1]

Iraq attacked Iran with the blessing and military aid from the United States so that means Iraq did nothing wrong there not if the United States approved of it.

Iraq complained about Kuwait slant drilling and asked about attacking Kuwait the U.S. didn't say no don't do it in fact they didn't say anything. That was when daddy bush was in office.

[bluestardad]

Saddam ask the United States State Department, and informed the United Nations Prior to attacking Kuwait over their Slant Drilling into Iraqi Oil Reserves.

[feelfree1]

Re: "Saddam Undone By Blunders And Brutality"

We could replace the word "Saddam" with "neo-conservatives/liberals" and the title still wrks perfectly!

[webatola]

Never in my life would I have thought I would see the day that my Government was involved in a hanging in this day and age. We talk all this phony talk of freedom and democracy etc. In this country if someone tried to Hang Bush for all his innocent deaths we%u2019d hear about Judicial Immunities. It seems we are just as bad as the enemy seeking a war trophy by barbaric means. Our Country used to be built on diplomacy and what was in the best interest of the Country. I have to wonder if a execution was to take place if it should have been done with more conventional modern humane methods and with the same protections we always brag about. What kind of example have we sent to the free world that our idea of free Iraq is to hang people rather then comply with laws and procedures of the rest of the world. I think Jesse Jackson%u2019s comments hold some relevance here. I think the way we went about this will haunt us and I am not impressed by my Governments actions.