A thug who used terror and war to stay in power (Saddam Hussein -- "must read")

Saddam was at heart a thug, born into a violent childhood in a country whose history has been shaped by great political violence. He studied law in Baghdad and Cairo, but was not an exceptional student. Instead, he strong-armed his way up the hierarchy of the Ba'ath party until he rose to the presidency in 1979.

Promptly he led Iraq into war with Iran, a punishing eight-year conflict that left more than 1 million people dead.

War was to characterise Saddam's rule, the glue he used to hold together his country and to maintain the dominance of his Sunni Muslim minority over the persecuted Shia and Kurdish communities.

As the Iran-Iraq war ended, he went into battle against the Kurds of northern Iraq, committing some of the gravest war crimes of his regime, wiping out villages with chemical gas attacks at a time when he was still an ally of the west. He sent his forces storming into Kuwait in 1990, disguising a long-harboured land grab with atavistic notions of pan-Arab unity. When western forces pushed his troops back, he then went to war on the Shia and the Kurds who had risen up in rebellion against him at home. He deployed his troops and his attack helicopters and the uprising was crushed with summary brutality. Graves across the south and the north were filled with the bodies of thousands of rebels. Most of those corpses were only recovered, mourned and reburied 12 years later, after Saddam's fall. The most modest assessments put at 200,000 the number of Iraqis who "disappeared" in the Saddam years.

Saddam hanged for many crimes against humanity!

http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/2006/01/alert_saddams_c.html

ALERT: Saddam’s Crimes Against Humanity **GRAPHIC VIDEO MATERIAL**

As the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein resumes, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is posting 4 videos of actual torture and murder that took place under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

FDD President Cliff May notes: “Television news, understandably, will not broadcast such videos. But they are, nevertheless, an important record of Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity that should be available to the public as his trial resumes.”

WARNING: This material is extremely shocking and graphic in nature. It should not be viewed by children. Also, it may be necessary to turn the volume down before watching the 4 separate chapters.

Please note, each chapter may take several minutes to download.

Chapter 1 http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/files/1.wmv

Chapter 2 http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/files/2.wmv

Chapter 3 http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/files/3.wmv

Chapter 4 http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/files/4.wmv

More here http://fdd.typepad.com/fdd/2006/01/alert_saddams_c.html

"He studied law in Baghdad and Cairo, but was not an exceptional student."

It occurs to me that Fidelito was also a less than stellar law student. In his instance, maybe it was being in Bogotá
for El Bogotazo in '48. The Mother of "Take It To the Streets".

Heard said of Colombia that La Violencia is the price for such a beautiful country.

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