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Donald Trump’s regular praise for authoritarian governments and dictators has come under fresh scrutiny this week following his latest laudatory comments about the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose human rights abuses and support for international terrorism made him a top enemy of the United States for decades. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,” Trump said during a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday evening. “They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over. Today,...

Donald Trump, speaking in North Carolina, just praised deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a killer of terrorists, noting that Hussein “didn’t read them the rights” before executing them. “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy. Really bad guy,” Trump begins. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights, they didn’t talk. They were a terrorists - it was over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.” Hussein was labelled a major sponsor of terrorism by the American government for decades, a status...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An old Arab proverb says tyranny is better than anarchy. A year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, Iraqis have scarcely had a day free of bedlam. That point was driven home Wednesday with the devastating bombing of a hotel in central Baghdad that killed dozens of people just two days before the war's one-year anniversary. Perhaps the worst day of violence was March 2, when suicide bombers attacked Shiite shrines in the holy city of Karbala and in Baghdad, killing more than 180 people. That attack, more than any other, has raised...

I opted to leave this as a PDF. Some of the material is disturbing.

WHEN THE IRAQI REGIME collapsed in April 2003, few observers saw reason to mourn the loss of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. While a great deal of information about the former Iraqi regime's assorted atrocities has been uncovered since the invasion, newly-released documents go even further in demonstrating its manifest depravity. One such document is CMPC-2003-012666, a letter from Qusay Hussein that directs as follows: Transfer all Kuwaiti POW's / a total of 448 captured Kuwaitis who are located at the Al-Nida Al-Agher Prison and the Intelligence / General Center and Kazema Prison in Al-Kazema, to make them human shields at all...

Mohannad is a spy for Daesh. He eavesdrops on chatter in the street markets of Mosul and reports back to his handlers when someone breaks the militant group’s rules. One man he informed on this year – a street trader defying a ban on selling cigarettes – was fined and tortured by Daesh (ISIS) fighters, according to a friend of Mohannad’s family. If the trader did not stop, his torturers told the man, they would kill him. Mohannad is paid $20 for every offender he helps to catch.He is 14.The teenager is one cog in the intelligence network Daesh has...

Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq's central bank to withdraw $1 billion for his youngest son the day before the invasion to stop it falling into foreign hands, according to a leaked letter apparently written by the former dictator. In a hand-written note to the bank's governor, marked "top secret" and dated March 19, 2003, the former president told Isam Huwaish to give $920 million and 90 million euros to his son Qusay and another man, al-Mashriq newspaper reported yesterday. The Iraqi national broadsheet reproduced the letter, which appears to bear Saddam's signature. Saddam sent bank a hand-written note Employees of the...

Former president Bill Clinton praised Saddam Hussein's lieutenants and their underlings on Tuesday, saying they were mostly "good" and "decent" people." "When [the U.S.] kicked out Saddam, they decided to dismantle the whole authority structure," Clinton told an audience at American University in Dubai. "Most of the people who were part of that structure were good, decent people who were making the best out of a very bad situation," he added. While Clinton didn't name, names, Saddam's authority structure was dominated by his two murderous sons, Uday and Qusay, as well as notorious characters like Ali Hassan al-Majid, [aka Chemical...

The death toll from the terrorist bomb attack in the Southern Philippines has risen to 21. The terrorist group Abu Sayyaf is being held responsible for the atrocity. Hamsiraji Sali, a commander in an Abu Sayyaf terrorist group was hiding out on the southern island of Basilan, admitted that he is getting funds from Iraq. Sali bragged the money would be spent "on chemicals for bomb-making and for the movement of our people." His boast led to the expulsion of Husham Hussein, an Iraqi diplomat, last week. Husham had been discovered contacting Abu Sayyaf by phone. Intelligence linked him to...

Al-Afari And Away: Ignoring the Saddam-ISIS link by Daniel Clark During two Republican primary debates, presidential frontrunner Donald Trump claimed that Saddam Hussein had been an enemy of Islamic terrorism, and argued that he should have been left in power to kill terrorists, so that our soldiers didn't have to. Considering that, one might think a reminder of Saddam's moustache-deep involvement in terrorism, along with the fact that he'd retained an active chemical weapons program between wars, would be a major news story. One might even expect that a story about a former member of Saddam’s regime helping ISIS to...

Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker used an Israeli businessman to evade American sanctions in Iraq while collecting a debt from Saddam Hussein. According to a report by WorldNet Daily reporter Aaron Klein, Baker hired Nir Gouaz, president of Caesar Global Securities in Israel, to collect a debt from the Hussein regime in 1998. Baker is a senior partner at the Houston-based law firm, Baker Botts, which made some $30 million in fees from the deal which the Israeli businessman mediated. Gouaz said the Iraqi regime owed some $1.65 billion to the Korean Hyundai Engineering firm for a series...

As Peter Allen once sang, Everything old is new again — including the claim that George W. Bush lied about Iraq to get us into a war. Last month, Donald Trump revived the allegations as an attack on Jeb Bush, whose candidacy was already fading out of contention. Judith Miller, who went to jail to prevent disclosing her sources, addresses this claim in a new Prager University video released earlier today, arguing that most of what people think they know about the march to war in Iraq is simply wrong … much like the intelligence analyses that took us...

The United States has targeted a lot of rogues and their regimes in recent decades: Muammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Manuel Noriega and the Taliban. As a general rule over the last 100 years, any time the U.S. has bombed or intervened and then abruptly left the targeted country, chaos has followed. But when America has followed up its use of force with unpopular peacekeeping, sometimes American interventions have led to something better. The belated entry of the United States into World War I saved the sinking Allied cause in 1917. Yet after the November 1918...

"As Pro-Palestinian Flotilla Activists Gather in NYC, Jewish Group Urges State Dept. to Probe Links to Terrorism" Thursday, June 17, 2010 By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) – Tensions in the Middle East over the recent Gaza flotilla incident could surface in New York City on Thursday evening, when a pro-Palestinian group hosts flotilla activists at a public meeting Jewish activists have tried to thwart. An organization called Al-Awda (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) is holding a meeting in a Brooklyn church featuring a leading official in IHH, the controversial Turkish organization behind the attempt to break Israel’s...

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Thursday that the Middle East was more secure when key dictators were still in power, and said too many Democrats and Republicans have supported toppling Middle Eastern governments to the benefit of the United States' enemies."Was the world, in fact, in the Middle East, a more secure place when Saddam Hussein was in power, when Moammar Gadhafi was in power, and when [Bashar] Assad wasn't fighting for his life in Syria?" asked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough."Of course it was," Cruz answered. "That's not even a close call."Cruz said Gadhafi did bad things but had worked...

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 6:47 a.m. ESTHillary Rebuked by Iraqi Leader New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has caused an international incident after she criticized Iraq's leading candidate to become prime minister as a result of last month's historic election, prompting a sharp rebuke. "Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration, and I don't know why she said this," Dr. Ibrahim Jafari, who is expected to become prime minister, told the Times of London on Thursday. "She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation," he added. During an interview last Sunday,...

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay. Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred...

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri again referenced the Benghazi, Libya, attack in an audio tape posted on jihadist websites last week, in remarks that, like all his statements, were immediately carefully scrutinized by counter-terrorism analysts searching for clues about the terrorist network’s operations. Al-Zawahiri had called for Americans to be targeted in Libya the day before the diplomatic mission was attacked, leading to speculation that al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan had some sort of role or influence in the attack.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has apologized for Iraq war "mistakes" and expressed regret about failing to properly plan after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, which is due to be aired Sunday. For the first time publicly, Blair has admitted to oversights in intelligence and planning of the war -- referring to the allegation that Saddam’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, a claim used by the U.S. and British governments to justify launching the invasion. "I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also...

Speaking Tuesday night to Brett Baier, Donald Trump sounded more like Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and Dennis Kucinich than like the Republican front-runner for president. Asked whether he stood behind his 2008 interview where he said it would have been a “wonderful thing” if Nancy Pelosi had attempted to impeach President George W. Bush, Trump said this: “I think he was a disaster and I think it was one of the worst decisions ever made. [He] has totally destabilized the Middle East. If you had Saddam Hussein, you wouldn’t have the problems you have right now.” I’m sorry, but...