Commentaries

UNDERSTANDING SADDAM BY HISTORY

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Published on Tuesday, 12 June 2007 09:42

Contemporary societal norms seem to stipulate that black people can legally address one another by the ‘n' word whereas whites can't address blacks by the same word. Why? Whites misused it and therefore lost the privilege to even utter this word, which blacks use so frivolously.
Baghdad has similarly lost some of the privileges; most international administrations take for granted, as a result of its past infringements. The northern no fly zone and the southern no fly zone were enacted to protect the Kurds and the Shiites. Saddam hates these two tribes and he made his hatred clear when he used poisonous gas against the Kurdish in 1988.
He is also deemed dangerous to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction because he has a history of breaching treaties, supposed to check his excesses. There is documented evidence, Saddam used chemical weapon during the Iran – Iraq war (1980-1988).
Iranian casualties who showed symptoms of gas poisoning were flown to various hospitals in Europe and Australia. The doctors who diagnosed the patients verified the allegations that Iraq had used illegal chemical weapons against the Iranians. Both Iraq and Iran are parties to the Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use of asphyxiating poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, material or devices as well as the use of bacteriological methods of warfare.
At an Iraq attack site particularly, Hoor-Ul-Huzwaizeh On the western border of Iran, there were 160 victims of gas poisoning. Among the gases experts found in casualties
were: Mustard gas, Tubun, Choking gas, Arsenicals, Germ-warfare agents and mycotoxis. He also dropped chemical bombs at susangerd, Iran.
The Saddam regime aggressively invaded Iran, simply out of a sense of vulnerability on Saddam's part and an unabated ambition to assert Iraq as a regional power.
Saddam finally became president of Iraq in 1979 after spending most of his youth in political struggles that had pushed him into exile, earned him a death sentence though in absentia, and imprisoned him for several years.
Saddam inherited a highly volatile nation owing to the age old rivalry amongst the Kurds, Sunnis, and the Shiites. He had lived to see, even participated in the endless coups and assassinations of political leaders in Iraq.
Because he didn't want what had happened to his predecessors to happen to him; he took deliberate measures to quickly grasp power with a tight grip, making sure his influence was dominating, overwhelming and insurmountable.
There is no better way to achieve that than to call for war. War has a magical way of turning a thug president into a hero. It's a political strategy that plays on psychology. War takes patriotism and dissolves it, in the government solvent so that, the two become homogeneous. The solution is then administered through the media to the brains of unsuspecting citizens. The result: The president's popularity soars overnight.
Shortly after Saddam assumed office, he didn't waste time to achieve this objective. In 1974 Iran was supplying weapons to Kurdish nationalists in Northern Iraq, enabling them to stage a revolt against the Iraqi government. Iran stopped supplying arms to the Kurds in 1975, when the two countries reached a compromise on a dispute regarding the border on the shatt al Arab estuary. Saddam Invaded Iran, ostensibly to reverse the 1975 settlement and to gain control of the rich, oil producing Iranian province of Khuzestan. This attack was also aimed at shutting off propaganda directed at the Iraq's secular government by the Islamic regime of Iran. Saddam feared that the Propaganda would undermine the loyalty of the Iraqi Shiites, who identified themselves with their Iranian Shiite brothers. Shiites comprise 60 percent of Iraq's population.
The war ended in August 1988 with an estimated total of 1.7 wounded and 1 million dead. Despite the fatalities and casualties Saddam had achieved most of his objectives when he set out to attack Iran. The Iraq nation held him in awe, the French and the United stated had armed him to the hilt to ensure his victory and Iran was no longer going to meddle in Iraq's affairs. No more arming the Kurds to stage a revolutionary and no more propaganda for the Shiites that might compromise their loyalty to his secular government.
Emboldened by his victory on Iran, Saddam invaded Kuwait on August, 2nd 1990, following a dispute over Kuwait pumping surplus oil, an act that would impact Iraq's economy negatively. To legitimize his invasion Saddam claimed, Kuwait was part of Iraq as per the geographical boundaries of the ottoman empire that comprised Iraq and Kuwait.
He marched 100,000 Iraqi soldiers backed with 700 tanks and took over Kuwait. He established a provisional government and threatened to turn Kuwait city into a grave yard, if any country dared to challenge his take over.
On January 1991, coalition forces launched desert storm. Iraq responded by launching scud missiles to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Fierce fighting continued until the 28 of February When Iraq agreed, to cease fire and with draw from Kuwait.
Saddam remained president of Iraq, even after the gulf war. He has since engaged the United nations in a game where he hides his weapons of mass destruction and the UN Inspectors seek them. He wonders why the united states is suddenly eager to deny him the pleasures of this game. He doesn't mean to harm anybody, he just want's to play like he has been doing for more than a decade.