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“Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, 8 miles (13 km) from the Iraqi town of Tikrit in the Sunni Triangle, to a family of shepherds. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son “Saddam”, which in Arabic means “One who confronts”. He never knew his father, Hussein ‘Abd al-Majid, who disappeared six months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterward, Saddam’s 13-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three.”
“On June 1, 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, had a monopoly on the country’s oil. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to expand his agenda.”
“Within just a few years, Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the “National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy” and the campaign for “Compulsory Free Education in Iraq,” and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)”
“In 1979 Iran’s Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Arvandrud/Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. During this period, Saddam Hussein continually maintained that it was in Iraq’s interest not to engage with Iran, and that it was in the interests of both nations to maintain peaceful relations. However, in a private meeting with Salah Omar Al-Ali, Iraq’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months. Iraq invaded Iran by attacking Mehrabad Airport of Tehran and entering the oil-rich Iranian land of Khuzestan, which also has a sizeable Arab minority, on September 22, 1980 and declared it a new province of Iraq. Most Arab nations and the United States supported him with artillery and medical supplies during this time.”
“The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam saw his war with Iran as having spared Kuwait from the imminent threat of Iranian domination. Since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, he argued, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Saddam urged the Kuwaitis to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but the Kuwaitis refused, claiming that Saddam was responsible to pay off his debts for the war he started.”
“On August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait. U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days after the invasion. On the one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was on friendly terms with the Soviets. On the other hand, Iraq controlled ten percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and with the invasion had doubled the percentage. [17] U.S. interests were heavily invested in the region,[12] and the invasion triggered fears that the price of oil, and therefore the world economy, was at stake. The United Kingdom was also concerned. Britain had a close historical relationship with Kuwait, dating back to British colonialism in the region, and also benefited from billions of dollars in Kuwaiti investment.”
“No conclusive evidence concerning links between Saddam and bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization has ever been produced by any US government official. The official assessment by the U.S. Intelligence Community is that contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda over the years did not lead to a collaborative relationship. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was able to find evidence of only one such meeting, as well as evidence of two occasions “not reported prior to the war, in which Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qa’ida operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al-Qa’ida and Iraq.” The Senate Committee concluded that there was no evidence of any Iraqi support of al-Qaeda and that there was convincing evidence of hostility between the two entities.”
“Both a Senate Select Committee and the 9/11 Commission failed to uncover convincing evidence of such a link”
“On December 13, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by British prime minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, shortly afterwards, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, formally announced the capture of Saddam Hussein by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.” Bremer reported that Saddam had been captured at approximately 8:30 p.m. Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground “spider hole” at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn.”
“During the arrest Hussein reportedly said: “I am the President of Iraq,” to which an American soldier replied: “The President of The United States sends his regards.”
“On November 5, 2006, he was convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraq Special Tribunal and was sentenced to death by hanging”
“In former ages, the names Âryânâ and Persis were used to describe the region which is today known as the Iranian plateau. The earliest Iranian reference to the word (airya/arya/aryana etc), however, predates the Iranian prophet Zoroaster (est. anywhere between 1200 to 1800 BCE, according to Greek sources, as early as 6000 BCE and is attested in non-Gathic Avestan; it appears as airya, meaning noble/spiritual/elevated; as airya dainhava (Yt.8.36, 52) meaning the land of the Aryans; and as airyana vaejah, the original land of the Aryans.”
“During the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330 BCE), the Persian people called their provincial homeland Pârsa, the Stonecarving from Persepolis showing Darius I the Great of Persia (521-486 BC).Old Persian name for Cyrus the Great’s kingdom which belonged to the Persian tribe of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranians and which can still be found in the term Pars or Fars as part of the heartland of Iran and for example in the map by Eratosthenes and other historical or modern maps.”
“However, the country as a whole was called Aryanam. The word Ariya–noble/spiritual/elevated”
“Iran has been inhabited by humans since pre-historic times and recent discoveries have begun to shed light upon what ancient culture was like in Iran, centuries before the earliest civilizations arose in nearby Mesopotamia”
“Before the Islamic conquest of Persia, Zoroastrianism was the national religion of the Sassanian Empire of Persia, and played an important role in the earlier Achaemenian and Parthian dynasties. The Iranian Prophet Zoroaster is considered by numerous scholars as the founder of the earliest religion based on revealed scripture. Many scholars point out that Judaism and subsequently, Christianity and Islam have borrowed from Zoroastrianism in regards to the concepts of Eschatology, Angelology and Demonology, as well as the fallen angel Satan, as the ultimate agent of evil; some suggest it might have been a process of mutual influencing. Zoroastrian monotheism has had major influence on the religions of the Middle Eastern monotheisms in adaptations of such concepts as heavens, hells, judgment day and messianic figures. These concepts (amongst many others) reflect the extreme dualism of Persian culture which has influenced Eastern and Western civilization. According to Professor Mary Boyce, who was the world’s leading doyenne of Zoroastrian studies and Iranology, Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed credal religions, and it has probably had more influence on mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith. ”
“Iraq was historically known as Mesopotamia, which literally means “between the rivers” in Greek. This land was home to the world’s first civilization, the Sumerian culture, followed by the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures, whose influence extended into neighboring regions as early as 5000 BC. These civilizations produced the earliest writing and some of the first sciences, mathematics, laws and philosophies in the world, making the region the center of what is commonly called the “Cradle of Civilization”. Ancient Mesopotamian civilization dominated other civilizations of its time.”
In the sixth century BC, the region became a part of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, before it was conquered by Alexander the Great and remained under Greek rule for nearly two centuries. A Central Asian tribe of Iranian peoples called Parthians then annexed the region, followed by the Sassanid Persians until the 7th century.
Beginning in the seventh century AD, Islam spread to what is now Iraq. The prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law moved his capital to Kufa “fi al-Iraq” when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyads ruling from Damascus in the 7th century ruled the province of Iraq.”
“In 1258, Baghdad was devastated by the Mongols and was later occupied by the Ottoman Turks. Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until the Great War (World War I) when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers.”
“Iraq was granted independence in 1932 by the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces in the country. King Ghazi of Iraq ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal died in 1933, while Iraq suffered from military coups (dictatorships) until he died in 1939. Iraq was invaded by the United Kingdom in 1941, for fears that the government of Rashid Ali might cut oil supplies to Western nations and because of his strong leanings to Nazi Germany”
“Iraq was invaded in March 2003 by a United States-organized coalition with the stated reasons that Iraq had not abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons development program according to United Nations resolutions. The justifications given for invasion included purported Iraqi government links to Al Qaeda, claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the opportunity to remove an oppressive dictator from power, and the bringing of democracy to Iraq.”
“A range of other possible motives include control over Iraqi oil fields, a desire to make amends for failing to overthrow Saddam during the Gulf war, revenge for Saddam’s effort to assassinate former President George Bush, and creating a counterbalance to a nuclear-armed Iranian theocracy.”
If you do it just right, you break the neck and death is quick. If you do it wrong, they either strangle or their head pops off.
Of course, all forms of execution are barbaric if your against the death penalty.
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