Saddam's short regional rise of militaristic projection

Eight years of war with Iran had left Iraq as a clear victor even though it hadn't gained anything from the war but casualties, Iraq had been at war with Iran for 8 years since it launched it's first wave and invasion in September 1980, before being forced to accept the ceasefire on August of 1988 after being on the offensive against Iraq for six years Iran had lost 60km of ground past the Iraqi border by the Iraqi Army and suffered several aircraft sorties.

Saddam Hussein had been made an infamous after ordering killing 5,000 people in a single gas attack on Halabja.

But Iraq came out of that war a regional power.



There was a delicate balance of power between 1988 and 1991, Iraq lost it's slip on power after the western nations led by the United States led a major aerial bombardment following their liberation of Kuwait.

But for a time after the Iran Iraq War there was a lot of uncertainty in the Middle East over the balance of power, Iraq had been ordering a lot of new military hardware to modernize it's forces, and was also on the way to developing a nuclear bomb probably in only a few short years, it had stationed Scud missiles and modified al-Hussein missiles in the west of the country facing towards Israel.

The world was changing, the wall had come down and eastern Europe had several revolutions, during this time in history there was a brief moment where Iraq was taking the opportunity to be the dominant military power in all of the Middle East.

In February 1990, Saddam Hussein demanded US naval vessels leave the Persian Gulf, however passed almost unobserved in the West, as they were all too busy with the developments in Europe and dissolution of the USSR.



By March 1990, US intelligence learned about Iraq building permanent missile launching sites in the west of the country, facing Israel.

Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq was in possession of binary chemical weapons and that:

“By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel, if it tries to do anything against Iraq.”

During the Arab Leage Summit, held in Baghdad, in late May 1990, the Iraqi President furthermore called for the liberation of Jerusalem, attacks on the USA and Israel, and demanded $27 billion from Kuwait, while blaming Kuwaiti and Saudi greed for oil, and equating them with an act of war against Iraq.

However there was a small emerald Saddam needed to ensure he had under his direct control to help the Iraqi economy recover from the war and ensure he stayed in his position of power for some more years to come.

The modern state of Kuwait was a country cut out of the old Ottoman empire of Basra back in 1961 for strategic purposes and for the lake of oil it sat on.

Control of Kuwait would be vital in helping Iraq completely recover economically and allow it to prosper following the long war with Iran.

So in August of 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait with over 100,000 troops, it only took a matter of hours.



Even though Iraq had a fair claim on Kuwait and had been mislead into believing the west would not intervene it was the resulting 1991 Persian Gulf War that would indefinitely shift the balance of power in the Middle East, as the US led and Saudi paid coalition used a massive amount of air power (including B-52's flying non stop from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana firing cruise missiles) to bombard Iraq destroying most of it's air defense, command centres and air defense centres and eventually a large amount of the countries infrastructure.



Iraq launched Scuds at Israel and Saudi Arabia with little effect (with the exception of the 28 US soldiers killed in the barracks at Dhahran) in undermining both states, the US ground offensive following the liberation of Kuwait lasted under 100 hours.

After being at war with the United States Saddam Hussein was left in power, he no longer had enough projection to use conventional power against his neighbours but still had some tanks and army and a marginally effective air force, the reason for leaving him in power was to ensure that neither Syria nor Iran could walk over Iraq with the brutal tyrant in power.

It was a drastic turning in the balance of power the aftermaths of them could be evident when the US led the invasion on the false provocation that Iraq actually mustered up the resources to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction.

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!

one over the top assassination attempt

On September 30th of 2002 an Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) Soviet made MiG-23 Flogger flown by an unknown pilot broke it's course from it's bombing mission and turned towards the Tharthar lake, there Saddam and his entourage were staying in the luxurious al-Tharthat Palace.

As he went for an attack run hoping to kill Saddam the pilots sturdy airplane was hit by a MANPAD fired by one of the palace guards, his luck had really run out, after ejecting his plane crashed, it's bombs still attached to their racks.

After being arrested he was bought to Saddam who interrogated him personally for quite some time, his originating air base was closed down and all the commanding officers arrested, the nameless pilot was burned alive in front of them before they were to be later executed.

This is a virtually unknown event up until the run up of the invasion of Iraq which would take place in March of 2003 less than a year later, and one has to admire the pilot for his brave if not over the top attempt of ridding the country of that piece of scum, if he had succeeded not only would history be very different but we would know his name and of his courage!

Iraq's slip on power

Following an eight year war with Iran Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in deep debt, although he came out of the war claiming to be a winner the truth was the countries economy had taken a hard blow, the war had been a blow to his forces and he owed billions in war debts to his southern Emirate neighbors.

However following the war with Iran the Iraqis (or Saddam at least) was opting to make Iraq a regional military super power making plans to rebuild his military

It owed $65 billion in unforgiven debts to Kuwait, which in those years was depressing other oil states since it was overproducing oil selling it for under the price required by OPEC, this further devastated the Iraqi economy, that along with the fact that due to history Kuwait was technically part of Iraq and had been given statehood on ignorant strategic purposes by western powers.

During this postwar time (1988 to 1990) the Iraqi regime had big plans regarding their regional power in the future, especially regarding improving their air power as a potent weapon of terror and a tool for destruction of enemy economies. Aside from purchasing around 140 MiG-29s (137 were eventually ordered and built, but less than 40 delivered) and 36 Su-24 fighters from the USSR (intended to replace obsolete MiG-23MF/MLs, Tu-16s, TU-22Bs, and MiG-25RBs) the IrAF was also showing immense interest in obtaining Su-27 Flanker and Mirage 2000 fighters.

As well as this Iraq was financing the development of a conventionally armed version of the French ASMP supersonic cruise missile, and the development of the MAA-1 Piranha heat-seeking air-to-air missile in Brazil, both of which were eventually planned to enter production in Iraq too. The basic problem with all these projects was money: Iraq was so starved of finances that negotiations for Mirage 2000s were dropped in 1989, because the French insisted that Iraq had to first pay its debts. The collection of MiG-29 interceptors was also slow, Baghdad instead turning to Moscow and negotiating for Su-27s. Eventually, all the projects were stopped due to the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 which was Iraq's final attempt to stop the country going into economic collapse, after (in a view opposed to in the west) Iraq annexed Kuwait renaming it the 19th province of Iraq.



While in the west it was blown out of proportion, after launching Operation Desert Shield the US convinced the UN to veto Iraq, a coalition was built up in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of defending it and that Iraq was ready to attack (they were digging in around Kuwait City).

Starting on January 17th Iraq's economic and military problems were about to get much worse, the start of the stupid TV war Operation Desert Storm had begun, several units of the Iraqi air force flew to Iran to avoid destruction by the coalition onslaught of aircraft sorties and cruise missile strikes.



Iraq in retaliation only managed to fire 32 Scud missiles at the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa killing two civilians and a few at Saudi Arabia in one case killing 28 soldiers in a barracks in Dhahran.

After the first 100 hours of the ground war the American led coalition ground forces stopped at the Euphrates, Iraq had been blown to tatters and most of the world held economic sanctions against them, Saddam was left in power to stop Iran and Syria becoming too powerful over a weak Iraq, which is how they had left Iraq, a weak enemy that could come under threat from their biggest potential enemy in the neighboring region (Iran).

In 2003 the US went the extra mile and went in to personally overthrow Saddam, which led to a rather violent war which has only cooled down in the past year or so, the Iraqi people had a real street thug as their president for the latter half of the 20th century and paid heavily for it after only ever maintaining a brief grip of power that a nation of its size and wealth deserved!

a reason Saddam may have claimed to have WMD's

In 2002 George W. Bush listed his axis of evil, in these included Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the next year a series of lies proposed that Iraq had WMD's including the material to build a nuclear bomb, this resulted in large scale coalition invasion led by the United States and Britain to overthrow Saddam Hussein constituting direct regime change.



A claim made by George W. Bush in recent years and up until he left office stated that he had to invade Iran since Saddam claimed he had WMD's "until the end."

Was Saddam threatening Iran with WMDs?

Iraq was a powerful nation up until 1991 when the US and Britain blew the shit out of it and then installed heavy economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of one million Iraqi's, Iraq was now a third world country broken backed country while Saddam clung on for power.

Now that Iraq was weak Iran might have a likely chance of militarily annexing the Shia population (most of the south of Iraq) into the Islamic Republic, this is what Saddam feared and the reason he launched the invasion of Iran in September of 1980.

So Iran in say the mid 1990's up until 2001 were at least prepared if not preparing to somehow take out Saddam and military annex the south of if not all of the broken backed Iran, a Tom Clancy book followed this scenario written in 1996.

Saddam had plans to develop nuclear weapons up until 1991 when his country was blown back to the stone age, his military from then on had little air power, his Republican Guard was still large and had several tanks but as the 2003 invasion proved very unorganized and dissolved very easily since they weren't coordinated to their full strength.

So to stop Iran from attempting an invasion if Saddam threatened the use of a nuclear bomb against an Iranian city in retaliation for any Iranian attack, there is no proof that the nuclear program was even continued since 1991 since there were no weapons found since the 2003 invasion when the United States took direct control of the country.

So was it a word game between Saddam and the current Iranian regime that led to George Bush repeating the smoking gun as a mushroom cloud that was an excuse for his stupid invasion to overthrow Saddam?

It is a weird scenario but is one that makes a lot of sense!

the deadliest antagonists to America in this 21st century

Hugo Chávez



Leader of the South American country Venezuela which (wait for it) has a hefty amount of oil, Chávez promotes a political doctrine of participatory democracy, socialism and Latin American and Caribbean cooperation.

I don't see a problem in this, basically he's thinking modern, people be free but also help their fellow man, he is seen by the United States as a threat to democracy in Latin America and George W. Bush even went as far to compare him to Fidel Castro!

He is also an outspoken critic against globalization and American foreign policy.

I'm not saying he has a point but I think we'd have a better world without a McDonald's on every street corner, and people helping each other?
Yes he is a serious threat.

Kim Jong il



If only the US took him more seriously.
Kim Jong il is a real stereotypical bad guy, his people live off grass while he builds more and more missiles that he might one day aim at Los Angeles or even Hawaii.

Kim has one of the largest DVD collections in the world apparently has attempted to make his own movies over the years, his regime bans people from internet access, foreign films and self expression!

His politics seem to be if he's not happy or has a hissy fit decides to point his missiles at cities full of innocent people to make his balls feel big!

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad



In 2005 president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said this about Israel:

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

In English according to every professor in Farsi from Tel Aviv to Tokyo means;

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Then a lie stating he said Israel should be wiped off the map accelerated across the media and the US and Israel took turns threatening war on Iran and in some cases in 2006 George W. Bush put the nuclear option on the table!

This is comparable to outspoken critics of communism in the United States during the 1960's calling it "an evil and malignant disease that spreads like an epidemic"
So criticizing a social system isn't allowed outside the US?

Saddam Hussein



In 2003 a series of ugly lies sparked a hasty invasion crushing Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in a matter of days using 250,000 highly trained soldiers and marines equipped with the latest weaponry from the worlds only hyper power, Iraq of course had been blown to the stone age by that same power (America) 12 years before and heavy sanctions forced them into a slow recovery starving to death over a million Iraqi citizens.



And their antagonist Saddam Hussein who they'd failed to take from power (even though they defeated him) in 1991 was found hiding in a spider hole after the shock and awe bombings of his country made him run for the hills!

Osama Bin Laden



Accused for organizing two hijacked planes to be flown into the two towers and have them collapse (from the gas in the airplane as he said himself) and sponsoring other attacks on America and its allies Osama bin Laden is world master at hide and go seek!

On October 7th 2001 and Americans and the British started their hunt, on that day F/A-18's and Tomahawk cruise missiles hit several Taliban targets, after a month they'd begun targeting singular caves!

By December of 2001 a videotape was found by US forces, the smoking gun showed bin Laden confessing the attacks, the thing is his facial features particularly his chin change size (probably when he's lying).



And he changed his facial styles more over the years than any human being I have ever seen.

Yes he is the deadliest antagonist to America;

Since he hasn't been caught yet and the al Jazeera version looks different than the CNN version I'm guessing the whole Osama crazy is a load of bullshit!
And no one in their right mind could mix up pronouncing Obama as Osama!