Truemors
Since the political media fiasco concerning Russia and Georgia at the beginning of August 2008 and how USA politicians lay blame on Russia for evading Georgia. I have been wondering about the lies and propaganda cast out before and during the 2003 Iraq war especially about the deposed leader Saddam Hussein.
Nothing ever seems what it really is, Saddam Hussein was a leader of a government that brewed with take over bids by rival groups political and religious. A country that was designed by the former great British Empire they planned its borders and designed it as a sovereign state, making it a mixture of religious entities and race. Any leader would have a struggle to keep the peace and needs to keep a very strong hand on the wheel of governance.
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrītī[1]; April 28, 1937[2] – December 30, 2006)[3] was the President of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003.[4][5]
A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power. As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces — at a time when many other groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government — by creating repressive security forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam spearheaded Iraq's nationalization of the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company, which had long held a monopoly on the country's oil. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace.[6]
As president, Saddam maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988) and the first Persian Gulf War (1991). During these conflicts, Saddam repressed movements he considered threatening to the stability of Iraq, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively. Whereas some Arabs looked upon him as a hero for his aggressive stance against foreign intervention and for his support for the Palestinians,[7] United States leaders 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 invasion of Iraq.
Captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003, Saddam was brought to trial under the Iraqi interim government set up by U.S.-led forces. On November 5, 2006, he was convicted of charges related to the executions of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites suspected of planning an assassination attempt against him, and was sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam was executed on December 30, 2006.[8]
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Looking at the total information Saddam seemingly was doing good things for the population of Iraq in fact my opinion is he was a strong leader that improved infrastructure and education in a bid to modernize Iraq. He stood up against the oil corporations of which in fact eventually lead to his downfall. After 9/11 the puppet of the oil corporations George Bush had a partial excuse to take back what the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company had lost in the early 1970's.
Saddam became more of a pain in the neck to the oil corporations when....
2nd August 1990 Iraq shocked the world by actually invading Kuwait city after threatening Kuwait since January 1990 where as some troops had entered Kuwait territory. This being related to an argument over the $14 billion that Iraq borrowed from Kuwait to finance the Iraq Iran war, Iraq had argued that the war had prevented the rise of Persian influence in the Arab World, thus protecting Kuwait asking that the loan be made none and void. The talks broke down, then Iraq had tried repaying its debts by raising the prices of oil through OPECs oil production cuts. Kuwait then prevented a global increase in petroleum prices by increasing its own petroleum production. This was seen by Saddam Hussein as an act of aggression. Other problems arose in reference to oilfield drilling on the boarders of Iraq and Kuwait. Saddam also found many other excuses as reason for the invasion. 6 days after a United Nations coalition force operation ‘Desert Storm’ soon freeded Kuwait of it illegal occupant. UN and the US placed sanctions on Iraq of which caused further problems to the oil rich nation with a bad economy. Soon after Iraq was making plans to supply oil to China by building a oil pipeline from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to meet with a Chinese financed pipeline into China. This was to surmount the oil embargo placed on Iraq by the sanctions.
Lets have a look at the good side of Saddam Hussein....
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, formally the al-Bakr's second-in-command, Saddam built a reputation as a progressive, effective politician.[18] At this time, 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.
After the Baathists took power in 1968, Saddam focused on attaining stability in a nation riddled with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant. (Humphreys, 78) Stable rule in a country rife with factionalism required both massive repression and the improvement of living standards. (Humphreys, 78)
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 oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, dominated the country's oil sector. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to expand his agenda.
Within just a few years, Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established 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 most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).[19][20]
To diversify the largely oil-based Iraqi economy, Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. The campaign revolutionized Iraq's energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.
Before the 1970s, most of Iraq's people lived in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised, and roughly two-thirds were peasants. But this number would decrease quickly during the 1970s as the country invested much of its oil profits into industrial expansion.
Nevertheless, Saddam focused on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athist government in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the countryside, mechanizing agriculture on a large scale, and distributing land to peasant farmers.[11] The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed according to the labors of the individual and the unskilled were trained. The government's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agricultural development in 1974-1975. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standard of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels for which Saddam had hoped.
Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, widening his appeal both within his traditional base and among new sectors of the population. These programs were part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics to enhance support in the working class, the peasantry, and within the party and the government bureaucracy.
Saddam's 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 even Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Then.....
Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the Nasser model. 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% minority of largely working class, peasant, and lower middle class Sunnis, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British colonial authority's reliance on them as administrators.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
In my analysis I have just listed the good side of Saddam Hussein the full balance of the leaders past can be found at wikipedia.org . Saddam Hussein was to my mind a strong leader and a nationalist, yes a dictator and he was out to improve and modernize his country. He was an anti-fundamentalist when it came to the Islamic religion and to remain in power he like many other strong leaders of history found it necessary to kill the assassins before they killed him. I do not condone that but looking at other leaders in the middle east and dictators through out history Saddam's blood letting was low. His modernization of Iraq was very commendable.
Certainly the Free Iraq war should be recorded as an invasion and once again many many innocent people including children where maimed and killed on behalf of the oil corporations. President George Bush is the monster.
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