if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!