[wmileo]

Stalin was such a louse. My only regret is that we were never able to hold Stalin accountable the way the IRAQI people will hold SADAM accountable for his crimes.

[Fudd]

Don't worry. There is a Judge who will hold Stailin to account.

[robowombat]

More than just an evil louse. It is not by chance that Saddam modeled himself and his regime after Stalin. Saddam nurtured long range schemes of making Iraq the controlling power in the Middle East and by virtue of control of Middle east oil a sort of global super power. His attack on Iran in 1980 was part of that strategic framework. If he could destroy or at least conclusively defeat the Persians Iraq would be the most powerful state in the Gulf and able to dictate to the oil producers. This didn't work and the Iraqis found themselves in a fight for existence as an independent state.

The occupation of Kuwait was to recoup monies to pay down the crushing debt load Iraq accumulated because of the war with Iran and to demonstrate that Iraq was if not the dominant state in the region at least on the south shore of the Persian Gulf. We know how that adventure ended. But Saddam's dreams of regional dominance lay at the root of his determined intransigence after 1991.

Stalin, his mentor, thought in terms of continental conquest and in long time blocks. His goal was to at least make the USSR supreme in Eurasia. While he miscalculated about Hitler thinking the German dictator was duped by Stalin's protestations of peaceful intent and Russia's almost eager delivery of important raw materials to Germany under the terms of the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact. In fact Hitler duped Stalin and sucker punched the Soviets before they could launch their own attack on the Reich which would have happened later in 1941.

Stalin's whole career has to be considered one endless exercise in the will to power, first the CP, then through collectivization and rearmament and purging the whole country and after that was to be the conquest of Europe.
We are fortunate his health failed and he died before he could launch World War III.