When Saddam Hussein held a public purge

Youtube Video ^ | 08/01/2024 | Penguin History

[Pol-92064]

In 1979, Saddam Hussein publicly accused 68 of his own party members of treason.

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TOPICS: Government
KEYWORDS: 1979; baathists; baathparty; cleaning; congress; iraq; penguin

[Pol-92064]

Maybe it is time to clean house in other parliaments?

[Retain Mike]

He was always a great admirer of Stalin, so it made such good sense to him.

[PAR35]

More than 27 deep state insiders that need to be purged in the US.

[PAR35]

68, not 27.

[frank ballenger]

Saddam felt a surge,
his anger a scourge,
his rage on the verge.
He called for a purge
then the chants of a dirge.
⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️

[maddog55]

So 86 the opposition?

Wait I didn’t know 86 meant violence I’m so sorry. Please except my misunderstanding.

[piasa]

1979 was an interesting year... year of the Iranian revolution and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. There was a big WILP communist meet too, attended by future US CIA Director Leon Panetta:

Lucy Haessler organized the 1979 national Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Biennial Conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Haessler invited three main speakers: Communist Party affiliated scientist and “peace” activist Linus Pauling, Randall Forsberg, founder of the thoroughly socialist infiltrated Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and Rep. Leon Panetta.

[Telepathic Intruder]

I’ve heard that members of Iraq’s government would say that the most terrifying thing was being in Saddam Hussein’s presence.

[dfwgator]

I’ve watched that many times, it’s absolutely chilling.

[George from New England]

86 gets kaos

[Delmarksman]

This is the way and I voted for this!

[The_Media_never_lie]

Yes, it is chilling. I doubt it was worth the American lives to invade this terrible place, though.

[BarbM]

I've watched that many times, it's absolutely chilling.
________________________________________________

In 1982 I had a Political Science class and one day Dr. Jones walked into class pale and shaking. He said that Sadam Hussein was dangerous and should be taken out.

This coming from one of the most pro-peace policy professors I have ever had.

[Paal Gulli]

And before anybody posts the LIE that "Bush Lied" about Saddam's "WMDs,"

Saddam did have WMDs. We found them. Bush's lie was not about Saddam having WMDs but about not having found them.

The NY Slimes ran with the story in 2014, detailing the injuries to US servicemen who chanced across Saddam's caches of mustard agent and sarin. The Slimes later published the US intelligence report on the events, released under FOIA. It's even been noted on Wikipedia that "... the total number of munitions discovered since 2003 had climbed to 4,990 ...."

But that doesn't mean Saddam only had 5000 chemical munitions left lying around, that means that that's all we could find. There could have been thousands more in the convoys of trucks overhead surveillance noted leaving Iraq for Syria when the invasion was imminent. And there might still be hundreds of thousands buried out in caches the desert that no one living knew the whereabouts of, apart from Saddam.

But the story that there were no WMDs is an out-and-out LIE.

In 2014 The Daily Beast reported that Bush administration insiders claimed that it was Carl Rove's idea to cover up having found the weapons.

Apparently the Bush administration was willing to take the hit politically because they saw that as a better option than instigating the largest Islamo-Fascists scavenger hunt in history because the news, if published, would attract terrorist types from all over the planet who lusted after chemical or biological weapons, hoping to find whatever left-overs that Coalition search teams had missed.

And BTW, the war was never about whether Iraq had X, Y or Z, the invarion was about the strong suspicion that Saddam probably had X, Y or Z. He definitely once had had and used used them in the past -- both chemical and biological weapons -- against his own subjects (the Kurds). Iraq even had admitted they once were manufacturing anthrax and botulism. Armed with the certain knowledge they had the capability to produce more of the same, and the equally certain knowledge that Saddam could not be trusted to play nice with them, the world community took the prudent course of insisting that Saddam allow international inspectors free and easy access to anywhere and anything they deemed necessary in order to allay the world's fears that he might still be manufacturing unconventional weapons, whether nuclear, biological, or chemical.

The proximal cause of the war was Saddam's refusal to allow the inspections, his flaunting of the will of the International community, not the suspicion that might still have been concealing caches of them.

The plan for war was never the problem. The problem was that Dubya only had one plan for restoring the peace, and it was a naive one. Look at the world today and you'll note that Muhammadan Arabs and a democratic form of government are like oil and water. They don't mix well, if at all. And Dubya had no back-up plan, so when the primary plan failed, he was caught with his fly open and America's lack of foresight was exposed.

* WMD is a disinformation term coined by the Soviets Pre-WWII. The non-pejorative and correct military terminology is either "unconventional" or NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons.

If we continue to endorse the use of "weapons of mass destruction" as "a thing," it eventually will become a tool for lawfare and they'll use it to come after every repeating firearm in existence (even the ones that aren't auto-loading).

https://web.archive.org/web/20171204192115/https://www.thedailybeast.com/insiders-blame-rove-for-covering-up-iraqs-real-wmd/

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1307507-nytfoiarequest/

https://web.archive.org/web/20210921043126/https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1307507-nytfoiarequest/

https://web.archive.org/web/20231114140043/https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1307507/nytfoiarequest.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20141017041345/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html