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- [00:00]
Mark Gagnon
Saddam Hussein, one of the most ruthless dictators of the 20th century. He ruled Iraq with an iron fist for over two decades. And his story isn't just about one man's rise to power. It's about how the collapse of ancient empires, Cold War politics and the discovery of oil transformed the Middle east into a powder keg of conflict. And today, we go through the entire story. From an abused child who leaves home and tries to go to law school and then becomes a hired hitman that then fails, that then gets exiled and then comes and joins the government and then becomes the vice president, then becomes the supreme leader and then becomes a tyrant. And we will go through his transformation from leader into paranoid autocrat who uses chemical weapons and commits genocide and plunges his country into devastating wars with Iran and Kuwait. But we'll also go into the bizarre details of his final years, like the secret novels that he wrote and his son's reign of terror and his strange last days eating muffins and listening to Mary J. Blige. Yes, this is the complete story of how a shepherd's son became a dictator whose actions would reshape the Middle east for generations. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. This episode is brought to you by Liquid iv. In heart pumping moments, you need hydration that can keep up. That's where Liquid IV comes in. Scientifically formulated to quickly replenish electrolytes and fluids lost from your well earned sweat session. Hydrate your favorite mode of movement with Liquid iv, made with triple the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients also available and sugar free tear pour live more. Visit liquidiv.com to learn more. What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world, from all history of all time. Today I'm joined by my dear friend, the Greek Freak, the handsome 65 legend with a large wiener. Christos, how are you? Glad you asked. All right, all right, all right, all right. Enough. We don't have time to be dilly dallying because today we are talking about Saddam Hussein. Now, I'll be honest. Before doing the research for this episode, I didn't know much about Saddam, right? I was born in the 90s. I kind of grew up in the 2000s. I remember hearing about this guy that got captured in a country far away, but I didn't know the details of how a guy born in Iraq that, you know Grows up basically as an abused kid, escapes, leaves his family home, goes and lives with like his uncle, starts living his life, becomes a good student, you know, starts doing his thing, gets involved in politics, gets hired as a hitman, tries to kill a guy, gets exiled, goes to law school, comes back, joins this sort of like socialist political party, rises the ranks, becomes a tyrant. And before he becomes a dictator, he's actually like doing good stuff in the country, he's helping the economy, becomes a tyrant. And then everything goes off the rails, starts invading people, goes into Iran, goes into Kuwait. And I actually more understand why America actually, you know, why the situation politically was such that after 2001 and the terrorist attacks that happened in New York City, why America would want to depose Saddam as the tyrant of Iraq. It never made any sense to me. I was like, okay, you have these guys, some of them are Saudi, they're a part of Al Qaeda. They fly to do this terrorist attack here. And now we're in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. I'm like, what is going on? This doesn't make any sense. Well, this episode will contextualize everything you need to know about, you know, the late 90s to 2000s Middle Eastern politics, or at least I think so. And if I missed anything, please drop a comment. Again, I'm not a historian, I'm just a stand up comedian with a fascinated fascination and an interest in geopolitics. So Saddam hussein was born April 28, 1937, in a small village called Al Aja near the city of Tikrit, which is northwest Baghdad in Iraq. His father, Hussein Abd al Majid, was basically just like a sheep farmer. He a pretty poor family. And some stories say that his father left the family before Saddam was born. But other historians speculate that his father actually died from like a throat cancer or some other type of illness during the winter of 1936. Saddam's family belonged to the Albu Nasir tribe, which had moved from Iraq from Yemen many generations before. And Saddam's mother was named Suba Tulfa Al Musalat. And her family is more important and respected than his father's family. One of her ancestors was Telfa IBN Mus, who was the grandson of a regional governor named Omar Bey III of Tikrit. So on his dad's side, it's pretty poor. And on his mom's side, he has a little bit of a royal legacy. Very, very, very thin. Before Saddam was born, his parents had another son who died around the same time that Saddam was born in 1937. And after Saddam's father either left or died, his mother married another man named Ibrahim Al Hasan Muhammad. Through the second marriage, Saddam got several half brothers and half sisters, but he didn't spend much time with them. And so when his father's out of the picture, his mother actually tried to end her pregnancy with Saddam. Even after he was born, she never really showed him a ton of love or affection, probably, you know, due to the difficult circumstances of her husband's death and then, you know, dealing with the trauma of trying to raise a child alone and then being married into a new family. As you can imagine, this was pretty traumatic for young Saddam. And it doesn't stop there. He had a pretty difficult childhood because of all these family problems. So his stepfather was extremely strict and to a certain extent violent. He would beat Saddam so badly and so often that young Saddam eventually just runs away from home. He went to live with his uncle in Baghdad, which is the capital city in Iraq. And while living there, he went to Al Khara Secondary School in Baghdad. And despite the tough upbringing, he was actually a good student. And he started to do really well in school and later started studying to become a lawyer. And his uncle Karala Tal had a huge impact on Saddam during these important years of his life. Even though Saddam moved to, you know, the big city, as you could imagine, he never forgot where he came from in Tikrit. And many years later, when he becomes the leader of Iraq, he gave his family members from Tikrit very important and powerful jobs in the government. So just to put Saddam's sort of early life into context, he grows up during a time of huge changes, not just in Iraq, but throughout basically the entire Middle East. So since the 1500s, most of the region had been controlled by basically a few powerful Muslim empires, mainly the Ottoman Empire and the Persians. And the Ottomans controlled Iraq and all the areas around it that are now countries like, you know, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, all of these other areas in the region. And so by the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire was, you know, getting weaker and losing control. But when they joined Germany and Austria, Hungary side in World War I, it basically wiped away the Ottoman Empire as we know it. So by 1918, the Ottomans were basically no longer. And after the war ended, the winning countries, you know, Britain and France, basically cut up the Middle east between themselves. And this is a massive topic that probably deserves its own 10 part series. But in short, they controlled these areas through something called mandates. And these mandates created new countries, but they didn't care about the different regions or the cultures or any of like the tribes or ethnic groups that actually lived in the region. And instead the British and the French leaders kind of maybe drew at random or perhaps intentionally forced different groups of people to live together, whether they wanted to or not. So in 1932, Iraq was supposedly given independence under King Faisal the First. But Britain still controlled most of the important stuff. As you can imagine, the empire of the English was not excited or enthusiastic to give up all of their access in the Middle East. So they controlled Iraq's valuable oil fields through a company that they called Iraqi Petroleum Company which was was mostly run by the British. This was still the situation when World War II started in 1939 and when Saddam was only two years old. Many political groups in Iraq actually worked with the Nazis during the war because they wanted to get rid of British control. They thought the Iraqi king was basically just a puppet for Britain, since he basically just went along with whatever the British Empire wanted. But again, this tactic of sort of post World War II British colonialism is not a new story. And you'll see this all throughout, you know, North Africa, Central Africa and the Middle eas, where basically the British are just playing sims and they kind of just put random people together. Imagine like your neighborhood, like, imagine like your house and stuff all of a sudden got reconfigured where like your house is cut in half and now you have to like live with the neighbors of the next house. But not all the neighbors, only the neighbors that live in the half that's near your house. And then your sister and your parents, they live with another family. And then that's just your country now. I mean, it's like crazy. But regardless, this is what happened. And there's another important part to understand when recognizing sort of the sort of context that Saddam came up through and how he rises to power. And basically what happens during the second half of the 1900s. You have to understand the Ba'ath Party, which started in Syria in 1947. And the party believed in two main ideas, basically Pan Arabism, basically uniting all the Arab nations and anti imperialism, getting rid of foreign control. So because of these popular ideas, the party spread quickly to other Middle Eastern countries. You can imagine if you're not familiar with, obviously, you know, the Middle east, there are many factions and different reasons for these Middle Eastern Arab nations to battle each other, right? Whether it's history or, you know, like land conquest or Sunni, Shia split, you know, you basically create this idea, this both idea that will connect all of these Arab states together to get rid of their colonizers. So it comes to Iraq in 1951, and Saddam's uncle, Kerala, was one of the early members. So from the beginning, the party was mostly connected to Sunni Muslims in Iraq. And Sunni and Shia are the two main branches of Islam. And they, you know, at times disagree with each other. However, Ba' athism wasn't really a religious movement. In fact, the party supported socialism and wanted a new way to run Arab countries that actually rejected having a theocratic religious control on politics. Instead, the Baath Party believes that every Muslim country in the Middle east should kick out and basically, you know, exile all the foreign influence and work together. Their goal was to make Arab people powerful and important to the world again, just like they were hundreds of years ago when Muslim empires were at their strongest in the region. So because of this, they were against the governments of Britain and France, who had set up in countries like Iraq and Syria when they had ended their mandate control between the world wars. So this put the Ba'ath party in Iraq on a direct path to conflict with the Iraq, Iraqi monarchy and the government that existed after World War II. I mean, to be honest, if you are, you know, someone in the Middle east and, you know, so say you're in Iraq and you hear about this bath idea and you're like, oh, we're all going to get together and just kick out the people that are trying to control and, you know, take our resources and give it back to, you know, their country instead of making our people rich. It's kind of fire, you know, I mean, it's basically make Arabs great again. Make. Yeah, it's Maga, dude. Make Arab. Make Arabia great again. That was the. It's Ba. Yeah, go back. Let's go back to the empire days. That's what they were trying to do. So Saddam hears about this and he joins the Iraqi Ba'ath Party in 1957 when he was just 20 years old. Back then, the party was pretty small. It had only like a few hundred members in Baghdad and some other big cities. But major changes were about to happen in Iraq right around the time that Saddam started getting seriously interested in politics. So by the mid-1950s, Iraq had become a place where people were really angry with their government. This was mostly because King Faisal II and his government officials were by all measures, not doing a great job at running the country. Iraqis were also inspired by what had happened in Egypt, where in 1952, the military officers had kicked out King Farouk and created a new government that wanted to get rid of British Control, just like in Iraq, the British had never really left, you know, Egypt completely, especially around the Suez Canal, because they want to control the shipping routes. So the Iraqi revolution that happened in July of 1958 was very similar to what happened in Egypt in 52. During this revolution, Iraqi military commanders like Abdul Salam Arif and Abd al Karim Qassam led a coup d' etat that started July 14th. And they basically overthrew King Faisal II's government. The king and several members of his family were killed. The government was basically completely taken over in just a few hours and a new Iraqi republic was announced. And really, if you're an empire in control, this is kind of the problem with letting any type of coup happen, you know, in the region of your influence. Because, you know, the Iraqis saw Egypt and it was basically, you know, that coup went viral and the, you know, Iraqis were like, dude, that, that shit looks fire, dude, let's, let's go do what they did, right? Copy paste. Let's take back our country. And so they did. And Even though the Ba'ath party was still pretty small, it had enough political connections in Baghdad that, you know, some of its important members helped form a new government with army officers during the summer of 1958. Because of this, even though Saddam was just, you know, a young 21 year old kid at this point, he was now connected to Iraq's most important political circles. By the late 1950s, however, the government that was created in 1958 was pretty unstable. There were many different political parties and groups fighting for power and most of them kind of hated each other. You know, like this is the old Game of Thrones line, right? Chaos is a ladder. So anytime you have a coup, even though you have all these different factions pushing for the coup, once the, you know, regent or the king or the monarch is ousted, all these other parties are now at each other because they're trying to seize control. For example, the Iraqi Communist Party quickly becomes a major enemy of the BAATH Party. Meanwhile, Qasem, the army commander who had led the revolution, was now basically running the new republic. And he refused to join something known as the United Arab Republic. This was basically a pan Arab organization that Egypt had created, which had even convinced Syria to politically unite with Egypt for several years. And the Ba' Athists were extremely angry that Qasem wouldn't join the Arab Union. The Arab Union was basically going to allow them to federalize. They were going to create a structured nationalized organization that was going, or international organization rather, that was going to unite all these different countries to officially oust their European colonizers. So what do they decide to do with Qasem? They decide to kill him. Yes. And who was going to be the one to do it? Saddam Hussein. That's right. Just a young Saddam picked to be one of the assassins of the new, you know, coup d' etat leader. So on October 7, 1959, while Qasem was driving in a car down Al Rashid street in Baghdad, he was attacked. Even though Kassem was only shot twice, the bullets only hit his arm and his shoulder, and he survived. Some people think that the attack failed because Saddam started shooting too early. He prematurely unloaded, which happens, right, Christos? All the time. We've been there. During the assassination attempt, Saddam was shot in the leg by Kassan's bodyguard, but he managed to get away. So after the failed assassination, Saddam and his boys were secretly moved out of Iraq to Syria, where Saddam quickly joined the Syrian branch of the Baath Party. Back in Iraq, several people were arrested for being connected to the assassination attempt. And they had some trials, and they basically wanted to make examples of all of them. So for a while, Saddam moved to Egypt and continued studying law at the University of Cairo, but he never finished his degree. But who needs law school, right? You know, who needs law school? And you're just like, dude, I'll just become a dictator, make my own laws. How about that? You guys read the laws that I made up. You know, you don't even need. Law school is for people that are trying to read other people's laws, trying to read what a man told you to do. Pretty gay. Not for Saddam. He was in Egypt in 1963 when two military takeovers happened in countries near Iraq. So in March of that year, Syrian military officers who belonged to the Baath Party staged a coup and took control of Syria, basically creating a Baatha Syria. Interestingly, eight years later, one of those military officers that did that coup was a gentleman by the name of Hafez Al Assad. Remember that name? Assad? Make any sense? He becomes the ruler of Baatha Syria, and the Al Assad family has basically continued to control Syria up until, you know, like a few months ago. So a few weeks before the Syrian coup, something called the Ramadan Revolution happens in Iraq. Ba' Athist members of the Iraqi army overthrow Qasem's government and they take power. But they only stayed in control for nine months before Abdul Salam Arif, who had been one of Qassem's allies in the 1958 coup, seized power in Baghdad and kicked out all the Ba' Athists from the government. So this is now a coup that then results in an almost assassination, that then results in, like, a. Another coup that then results in a counter coup. And this happens in November of 1963. I know it's confusing, but all you need to know is that there's all this chaos in the region. Everyone's trying to seize control, and Saddam is waiting patiently in the wings. So by 1963, Saddam comes back to Iraq after, you know, leaving Egypt, shortly after his party had taken power in February. And with this November coup removing the Ba' Athist from power, Saddam decided to stay there and continue working secretly in Baghdad with the other remaining Ba' Athists that basically were operating underground. He was arrested in 1964 and found guilty of being involved with an illegal political party, which got him sent to prison for several years. Saddam was also accused of planning to kill Arif, which led to his imprisonment in October. However, he didn't stay in prison for long, as the Iraqi government had originally intended. He escaped after serving only two years of his sentence in 1966. I mean, just picture this, right? Like, this guy is in Iraq. There's a coup. They hate the monarch. They get him out of there. The new guy comes in. Saddam tries to kill him. He then gets sent to Syria and then goes to Egypt. He's in law school, seeing what's going on in Syria, seeing what's happening in Iraq. Comes back, goes underground, gets arrested, gets thrown in prison, breaks out of prison. This all happens in, like, eight years. It's like. It's crazy. So by Now, Saddam is 30 years old, and, you know, he's had a pretty tough political career. But things start to kind of change because as he escapes, he becomes involved in the Iraqi Ba' Athist movement in a more formal way. So he's made the regional commander of the party. And people quickly realized that he was really good at organizing and growing the party, even during a time when party members were arguing about how closely they should work with the Soviet Union and other communist countries. It's also important to note that around this time, Saddam gets married, starts having kids. So in 1963, shortly after he came back from Egypt, but before he gets arrested and goes to prison, he marries his first wife and his first cousin, Sajida Talfa. This was an arranged marriage, basically, to his uncle's daughter. And I know that might sound a little weird, like, whoa, his cousin. This is Pretty common for most of human history and still occurs today in many places and especially at this time in Iraq. It was not crazy, right? You're trying to consolidate power within family lines. So he marries his uncle's daughter, and they quickly start having children. They have a couple, right? Their first son, Uday, was born in 1964, and then they have another son named Kusay in 1966. They went on to have three daughters throughout 68, 69, and then 72. But they weren't Saddam's only children. In 1986, he marries a second time to a woman named Samira Shabandar. And people also think that he may have had a third or a fourth wife, but no one really knows for sure. And through all these relationships, Saddam probably had several other children. But his first marriage and those five kids were the most important ones. Even though Saddam's political career was incredibly brutal and violent, people actually said that he was a decent dad, which is kind of ironic. This was the first of many contradictions about Saddam. He was someone who used chemical weapons, like regular weapons in wars, and committed genocide against groups of different people in Iraq, but, you know, was known for giving a charity and helping people. So, again, this is not atypical of, you know, you can think of, like, Mafia bosses, right, where, you know, they're killing people and doing shakedowns on business, but also doing, you know, big, like, turkey Thanksgiving giveaways and, you know, doing charity drives at Christmas time. So these contradictions tend to exist within people of great power. Another interesting note about one of Saddam's kids. We actually did an episode on UD Huss Hussein and sort of the unhinged brutality and violence that he carried out against the Iraqi people. Too much to really get into for this. If you're interested, check out that episode. But it is, needless to say, pretty grotesque. I mean, this guy would, like, go do raids on people's weddings, steal their wives, murder people. He ends up murdering the guy that introduced the Dom to his second wife because he thought it was. He thought it was basically, you know, disrespectful to his first wife and, like, his mom, that he would, you know, go off and marry another woman. There's a whole crazy thing. The guy's insane and unhinged. Needless to say, that's its own episode. Go check it out. So how does Saddam officially, like, climb to power? So this happens, really, in 1968 with something known as the 17th of July Revolution. Now, you can tell that a country has a lot of revolutions when they Start just naming them days of the week. And this is that moment. And this is basically the time when the Ba' Athists finally took complete control of the Iraqi government. So the whole Middle east had become very unstable because of the six Day war between Israel and several other Arab countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. And at the same time, the Republican government in Baghdad was getting closer to the United States, which, as you can imagine, made many people angry because again, the whole idea is like, hey, we don't want these foreign Westernized people coming over into our country taking our resources. They've seen what the United States has done in other nations and, you know, around the region, they've taken their resources for themselves. The British, and now they see the Americans potentially as doing the same thing, and they get a little bit scared. So they don't want, you know, the Republican government getting close. So the Ba' Athists and others thought that Iraq needed a major change in its political system. So July 17, 1968, members of the Ba' Athist movement and the Iraqi military carried out what was basically a bloodless coup and took over the government in Baghdad. They criticized the country's growing friendship with the US and set up this Ba' Athist government led by Ahmed Hassan Al Baqir. And Ahmed was Saddam's cousin. And Saddam was quickly made the Vice president of Iraq. He got this important job partially because he had helped get rid of Ba' Athist leaders who disagreed with Ahmed's government and his plans in the late nineteen six. And this was basically the start of Saddam's journey to becoming the supreme ruler of Iraq. So over the next 10 years, Saddam makes himself essential to running Iraq under the Ba' Athist government. He was really good at managing things and oversaw some major changes in the economy that started turning the country into one of the richest nations in the Middle East. Most of this success comes from, you know, Iraq's huge oil reserves that we have mentioned. And the country has some of the biggest proven oil fields in the world. Makes Iraq's economy heavily dependent on oil even to this day. And when the Ba' Athists took power in 1968, Iraq's oil industry was still mostly controlled by Western companies, you know, the British Americans. And by the 1970s, Saddam aggressively took over these companies and made them Iraqi owned. This worked out perfectly because of the 1973 energy crisis, when the biggest oil selling countries in the Middle east cut off oil supplies to Western countries like the US And Britain because they had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, which again, another conflict between Israel and several, you know, Arab nations, mainly Egypt and Syria. Basically, oil prices shoot up by almost 300%, going from $3 a barrel to $12 a barrel, which is a massive jump. And because of these outside conflicts and because Saddam took control of the oil industry in Iraq at exactly the right time, Iraq made a massive amount of money from this crisis. What's up guys? 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And they argue that the design itself created a dangerous condition. And thankfully for this guy, because he called Morgan and Morgan, he will get justice in his case. Just like the 500, 000 other clients that got the compensation that they deserved over Morgan and Morgan's five year career. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm with over $25 billion recovered. I'm telling you, hiring the wrong law firm can be disastrous. And hiring the right one could substantially increase your settlement. With Morgan and Morgan it's so easy to get started and their fee is free unless they win your case. So just Visit for the people.com Gagnon G A G N O N or dial pound law. That's pound 529. That is for the people.com or dial pound law. That's Pound 529. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show.
- [27:07]
Christos
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- [28:08]
Mark Gagnon
So with all the oil money that started pouring into Iraq in the mid-1970s, the Ba' Athists could start modernizing the country and actually creating ambitious social programs that for a while made Iraq have the best quality of life amongst many of the Muslim countries really in the Middle East. Saddam was kind of front center, right? He was in charge of overseeing most of these improvements. So for example, he led an education campaign that dramatically increased literacy rates for both men and women in the country. He was also responsible for creating a universal basic healthcare system. And these efforts were so successful that UNESCO officially recognized him for his work. Additionally, Saddam tried to make Iraq's economy more stable in the long run by using oil from the 1970s to develop new businesses and build modern infrastructures throughout. His goal was to, you know, basically diversify the economy so that when the oil profits eventually go down, when the crisis is resolved, or maybe if the oil fields dry up, the country would still be able to thrive based on the new industries. He also worked to improve Iraq's agriculture by introducing modern machinery to replace, you know, the old fashioned plows and pre industrial farming methods, which again, I think this point is actually super important that he basically nationalizes the resources and is able to stave off a coup or an assass attempt from the west. And he does it right at the time of an energy crisis, which is just unbelievable timing or luck or just really savvy political work. Regardless, it benefits Iraq immensely. So by the 1970s, Iraq starts to completely change its foreign policy. As a socialist Ba', Athist, Saddam was initially focused on bringing Iraq closer to the Soviet Union and moving away from the US and other Western countries. And this shift, you know, it makes sense because Iraq had taken over all these Western oil companies in the 1970s, which had already damaged its relationships with the West. And in 1972, Iraq and the Soviet Union signed a 15 year agreement for economic and diplomatic cooperation. And again, this is important to note that, you know, during the Cold War, the Soviets are trying to find different proxies that they can align with. And they are, you know, infamously Cuba and, you know, northern Vietnam and North Korea, all that stuff. They're basically trying to find, find different countries that they can sort of align with. And so to get back at Iraq for this, President Richard Nixon and his administration started to give aid to the Kurds in northern Iraq. And the Kurds is an ethnic group that exists within Iraq who wanted to create their own independent country in the region. And this eventually leads to the second Iraqi Kurdish war that broke out in 1974. And this was basically a continuation of an ongoing conflict that had been happening throughout the 60s in Iraq. Iraq, but had calmed down when the Ba' Athist government and the Kurds, led by Mustafa Barzani, had started peace talks. By the 70s, however, Saddam managed to deal with the Kurdish threat by negotiating something called the algiers Accords in 1975 between Iraq and Iran. And this agreement was helped along by the president and leader of Algeria. In this deal, Iran agreed to stop giving military and logistical help to the Iraqi Kurds in exchange for Iraq giving Iran a small piece of territory along the Shatt Al Arab River. Basically, because of this agreement, the Kurdish military uprising was quickly crushed and northern Iraq was brought firmly back under Baghdad's control. However, this wouldn't be the last time the Saddam would take major action against the Kurds. Again, this is sort of just how power works in most countries around the world. And in America, we're a little bit immune to this because, you know, we exist within the, you know, sort of monopolar power of the world. But anytime you have different ethnic groups and separatist movements within a country, different countries can basically fund them either through weapons or money or influence and basically create tension within the nation that then will cause the nation to fracture, cause a civil war, which then you can instill some type of regime change or, you know, basically have a successful revolution. This has happened time and time again. And the United States was basically trying to do this with the Kurds, you know, and Iran by proxy was trying to do this with courage to destabilize Iraq. And Saddam was able to put it down, basically saying, hey, take this little piece of land, you can have it. Just stop messing with this ethnic group. And Let us quell the rebellion. So during the second half of the 1970s, Saddam moved into a position of incredible power in Iraq that he had never had before, because earlier he had already become the second most powerful person in the Baathist government, with only his cousin ranking higher than him. During this time, Saddam was deeply involved in, you know, running the economy and foreign policy and managing other important governmental matters. Then Saddam was also promoted to the rank of general in the Iraqi army. By this time, Al Bakir was starting to suspect that Saddam was trying to take complete control of Iraq. So in the late 1970s, Al Bakir, he starts negotiations with the Ba' athist government that's in Syria, and he tries to create a political union between Iraq and Syria and their sort of, you know, co mingled government philosophies. And in this arrangement, Al Bakir would be the main leader until he died or retired. And then President Hafez al Assad of Syria would then take over. And this plan would have completely prevented Saddam from becoming the next ruler of Iraq once Al Bakir was gone. This is a problem for Saddam. So you can see how this chessboard is kind of moving and, you know, with this play, this then forces Saddam to act quickly to protect his position. So by 1979, in July, with support from the military and many important people in the Baathist government, he forced Al Bakir to resign as the president of Iraq. Saddam then becomes the head of the state that same day in a bloodless coup. And that's why they call it bloodless. He was basically able to manage all of these different components of the military as the vice president to then get the president to step down without having to assassinate him, you know, which is good because that's literally his cousin. So from this day forward, he would stay in control of Iraq for the next 24 years. So Saddam is now the president. He did it. He officially climbed the ranks as, you know, the son. Basically like an orphan, kind of of like a little sheep herder to, you know, a convict to the vice president to officially the president of Iraq. Now, if you were Saddam, you'd probably be like, sweet, now I can chill. That's not what Saddam did. No. One of the first things that he does as the new leader of Iraq and the Ba' athist government was to get rid of anyone in the Ba'ath party who opposed him or might challenge his power. This happens six days after he takes control. He didn't even make it to Sunday. Six days. So July 22, 1979, as part of the, you know, taking over. Saddam called a meeting of the Ba'ath Party's most important and mid level officials at the Al Kuld hall in Baghdad. When they showed up to the hall, the party members heard something they were not expecting. And this is one of the most unbelievable and terrifying moments in all of maybe Middle Eastern history. I mean, truly, this is insane. Saddam spoke to them and claimed that he had discovered a fifth column. Basically like a secret enemy group working inside the Ba'ath party. He said this group was trying to weaken their control of Iraq and eventually help the Syrian Ba'ath Party take over Iraq. Then Muyi Abdul Hussein, who used to be Al Bakr's private secretary, came forward to confess that he had been a part of this conspiracy since 1975. He then read out loud the names of 68 other people in the party who were also involved. No one knows for sure if Abdul Hussein was tortured or if his family was threatened in order to make him confess. But what we do know is that Abdul hussein and the 68 other accused conspirators were taken away and arrested. A special criminal court was set up and they had some trials. How legit were these trials? Probably not very. And for the next two weeks, they were each tried one by one. In the end, 21 of the 68 were executed while others were fired from their jobs as Saddam eliminated every possible opponent. This purge in the summer of 1979 also completely destroyed the relationship between the Iraqi Ba' Athists and the Syrian Ba'. Athists. Right, because basically he's saying, look, there are some people within our own party that are trying to sell us out to Al Assad and the Syrians, to basically have the Syrians and Al Assad take over our country. And I'm not going to let it happen. So I figured out that this guy was a part of it and I tortured him for three weeks and eventually he's willing to come forward and confess. And all you people that are involved, I mean, I couldn't even imagine if you were one of the conspirators, one of the 68. That's a lot of people. And they're sitting there, there at this meeting and they're listening to their name get called and they're just like, I mean, you can see a video of this online. It's truly just insane and chilling seeing all these people kind of, you know, 21 of them walking to their death, just like, well, there you have it. But again, this is, you know, terrible and tyrannical, but not uncommon for dictators to do whenever they take power. Your goal is to wipe away all the potential threats. I mean, this goes back to biblical times, right? The king is like, hey, kill all the firstborn, because apparently there's going to be a king born. You, yada, yada, yada, tales old as time. And Saddam is The, you know, 20th century version of that. So the way that Saddam basically purged the Baath Party and took power in 79 basically set the pattern for how he would rule Iraq. During the 1970s. Hussein had been pretty effective as a politician who made a lot of good changes to Iraqi society and proved life for a lot of Iraqi people. But after he becomes dictator in 79, Hussein turned into a power crazed authoritarian tyrant. He used paramilitary groups like the Iraqi Popular army and secret police organizations like the Mukabarat, which was also called the Iraqi Intelligence Service, to start a reign of terror in the early 80s that lasted for more than 20 years. His government constantly spied on society looking for political enemies, actively persecuting groups like the Kurds and Shia Muslims, and allegedly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured tens of thousands of Iraqis who were suspected of opposing the government or being dissidents. This terror campaign even went beyond Iraq's borders during the 1980s. The Muqabarat, or, you know, the secret intelligence service, was responsible for assassinating Iraqi political exiles in countries such as Sweden and Sudan. Saddam was in charge of all of this, which is why history will remember him as a tyrant. I mean, it's insane. I mean, this guy was literally, like, being recognized by UNESCO, I mean, like 15 years before as a great, you know, Middle Eastern ally and a guy that understood how democracy should be run to literally assassinating political dissonance and exiles in Sweden, of all places. Pretty crazy. So along with the, you know, growing tyranny, Saddam also developed a cult of personality. You could say by the 1980s, he liked to present himself as the successor of the legendary ancient Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. And he even went as far as having his name stamped on archaeological sites around Iraq that were, you know, thousands of years old. He also had statues of himself built all over Iraq. And his image started appearing everywhere in Iraqi society. On coins, paper, money, murals painted on the sides of buildings in Baghdad and other major cities and towns across the country. He also held two fake national elections over the years, first in 95 and the second in 2002. And in these absurd staged events, Hussein supposedly received nearly 100% of the vote. Landslide victory. This is like Harlem Globetrotters versus the Generals, you know what I mean? It's like insane to think, but, you know, he was like, hey, let's have a, let's have an election. Let's see what happens. Oh, 100%. Pretty good. And it's easy to laugh at a lot of like the over the top displays of dictators, you know, and it's funny to be like, oh, dude, there's no way they fell for it, but, but it was actually extremely successful. And very many dictators during the 20th century would use these tactics. They effectively convinced people that there was only one possible leader for their country. Right? I mean, I'm the descendant of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king. My name is on these archaeological sites. My face is on every building you see in Baghdad. I mean, who else could run this country than me? And so this, combined with the brutal actions of the secret police and other government agencies, made sure that Saddam had complete control over Iraq from 1979 onward. Even as the country's economy started to fall apart because of, you know, the oil revenues and a long, expensive war with Iran, yada yada, yada, he still was able to control the nation. So most of the first half of Saddam's time ruling Iraq was controlled and shaped by a war with Iran, which was, you know, Iraq's direct neighbor to the East. In 1979, Iran underwent their own revolution, which to be honest, is kind of similar to Iraq in some ways. They basically kick out the Shah. And the Shah was supported by Western countries and was in a way, put in place by the United States after Mossadegh was taken out by, you know, a coup d'. Etat. Read into that, which is pretty fascinating. You got Kermit Roosevelt, a card carrying CIA guy that kind of goes in there and handles some biz, and they basically put in the Shah. And the Shah is very, you know, agreeable and friendly to the west and is, you know, cutting deals where he's giving a lot of oil to, you know, England and America. And then eventually the people of Iran protest and they revolt and they bring in Ruhollah Khomeini and his Muslim followers and basically puts them in power in Iran. In 79, Iran was now a theocracy, which is a country that is ruled by the religious leaders and they are controlled by Shia Muslims. Most of Iraq's Muslim population was also Shia, but Saddam and the Baath Party was made up mostly of Sunnis. Sunnis and Shias, like I mentioned before, are the two main branches of Islam that split apart over a thousand years ago. Because they disagreed who should lead the Arab Muslim caliphate. This is also a fascinating history that is worth looking into, but too detailed to get into today. All you got to know is that you have Saddam in Iraq, and he's Sunni, and you have basically the Ayatollah, the. The Muslim government that takes over Khomeini, and he is Shia. So the Ba' Athists in Iraq were worried that after the Iranian revolution, Khomeini and his followers would try to weaken Iraq by appealing to the Shia majority inside of Iraq and spreading Islamic ideology into the country. Basically just going into Iraq being like, hey, who should really be leading you? Right? You really want to be led by a Sunni guy? Why don't you let the Shia. Why don't you let the, you know, Khomeini and the religious elite of, you know, Iran? Why don't you let them control you? So this is a problem, right, because the Ba' Athist wanted Iraq to be more secular, not controlled by religion. Right? They're socialist at their core. So fighting starts almost immediately after the revolution happens, right? You have both these different revolutionary countries that are diverging, and it's both a political battle as well as a religious battle. And this is mostly because Saddam was confident that the Western countries, like the United States, would help him since they wanted to crush or, you know, seriously damage the Iranian revolution. So again, you can see how all these chess pieces are rolling around. So in September 1980, he starts the war. The Iran Iraq war would last for nearly eight years and become one of the bloodiest conflicts ever seen in the modern Middle East. The war that followed was basically a border conflict with Iraq invading western Iran in late 1980. But this invasion failed in 1981 and led to Iran fighting back. By 1982, Saddam was making it clear that he would consider a ceasefire in peace talks because of the quick victory he had expected had instead turned into a long, grinding machine that he didn't want to be a part of. However, by the time, Iran's military had gotten stronger and more advanced, so they had the upper hand. So instead of seeking peace, the Iranian government took the war into Iraqi territory and almost captured the area, the city of Basra in Iraq, by the mid-80s. But the military situation changed again when Saddam's government started drafting more soldiers and received more aid from foreign countries. So by 1985, Iraq was able to launch a new offensive. But just like in 1881, it failed and was followed by another Iranian counterattack. In this counterattack, Iran captured Al Fa in southern Iraq in 86, which really shocked the Iraqi military commanders. But the Iranian government couldn't follow up on more advances, and the war went back to a stalemate. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because you own a small business or maybe you work for a small business, and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little, you know, furniture business, right? 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And I'm sure you're thinking, okay, if this is going to make my life easier, give me more free time to spend with my friends, family and playing softball and make me more money. It must be crazy expensive. This is the good news. Listeners of this program are going to get a 14 day free trial. That's right. You get two weeks with Odoo completely for free when you go to odoo.com camp. That's right, odoo.com, use the promo code camp. And you will get 14 days for free. Just to try it out, see if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it. All right? But Odoo's gonna make your life so much easier. Everything you need, all in one place. Save time, make more money. Now let's get back to the show.
- [46:56]
Christos
At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com Running.
- [47:25]
Mark Gagnon
This episode is brought to you by Pluto TV. Summer of cinema is here and Pluto TV is exploding with thousands of free movies. Feel the Explosive action all summer long with movies like Gladiator, Beverly Hills Cop, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, Good Burger, Stealth, Four Brothers, and Star Trek. Bring the action with you and stream for free on all your favorite devices. Pluto tv. Stream now, Pay Never. Stream now at Pluto tv. The Iran Iraq war has been talked about a lot over the years because of two main things. First was the support that Saddam and the Ba' Athist in Iraq received from Western governments like the United States. There is no doubt that this happened and they didn't really even try to hide it. Right. There were regular debates in the US Congress through the 80s about how much aid to give Hussein. This help included money and weapons and was probably crucial in preventing Iran from winning at certain points in the war around like, 82, 83. However, this didn't mean that the US saw Saddam and Iraq as allies. It was more that, you know, they thought that Iran was the worst of the two options and they were willing to help Iraq to prevent Iran from conquering them. So if you have, you know, again, to put it in America's perspective, they have a very favorable monarch that's in Iran. And then in 79, there's a revolution. They put in this, you know, staunch, you know, some would say radical religious theocracy, and they have a guy like Saddam who is wanting to combat that. So they see Saddam as a sort of help enemy that they can arm to then go into Iran and destabilize them. The second major thing that makes this conflict notorious was Iraq's use of chemical weapons like mustard gas and sarin gas, especially when Iran was threatening to win. On the other side, Iran's widespread use of child soldiers led to tens of thousands of teenagers dying on the battlefield during the war. I mean, this is truly one of the most atrocious conflicts that have happened in the Middle East. East. Eventually, the war ended, although Iran had the upper hand for most of the conflict and got it back again in 86, 87. People at home were getting tired of the war. They lost very many soldiers, many of them, you know, extremely young. And Iran's resources were drying up. And it also seemed unlikely that Iran could deliver a final, decisive blow against Iraq. And so in this situation, Saddam sent a warning to Tehran that he would start a new bombing campaign campaign and start using chemical weapons widely in 88, if Iran didn't agree to peace talks. Tehran understood that since Western countries seemed unwilling to stop Saddam's worst behavior, that they had to negotiate. And this was made worse when the US shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in July of 1988, which really worried the Ayatollah and others in Iran that the US Might get more directly involved. And of course, you know, the United States specifically in this time is the, you know, the, the monopolar power of the world. And no military can stand up to United States. So if America wants to get directly involved, it's going to be an issue for any country. So with this in mind, both sides agree to peace terms and the war ends in 1988. It had lasted almost eight years, resulted in roughly 1 million deaths, although the exact numbers are still debated and accomplished nothing. Basically both sides claimed victory. But in reality, the war had kind of ended in a stalemate with just a million people cumulatively dying in the battle. I mean, for what, right? I mean, these are like, you're sending kids like, you're like on both sides, you're sending young kids to go fight these battles over a border dispute over a religious philosophy. I mean, it's just, just so sad. Regardless, that is what happens. So by the end of the Iraq Iran war, they don't have peace. And you know, Iraq is, you know, kind of in a sort of stable ish position for a little bit, but it doesn't last long. So Saddam decided to use the final stages of the war as a cover for what was basically a genocide against the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. So you have this whole conflict happening with Iran. People are focused on that. In the meantime, is it possible I could carry out a genocide to get rid of this minority group that's causing trouble in my country? Was Saddam's thought. The Kurdish people are one of the most. I mean, I don't know, I probably should do just a whole episode. Breaking down the Kurds. They're one of the most unlucky groups in modern history. I mean, there are millions of them and they control a large area in the northern Middle east, including northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey and some nearby regions, regions though they have never had their own country in modern times. So because this was a ethnic minority that never had their own country that always existed within other countries, they were regularly persecuted by the governments of Iraq and Turkey. So during the Iran Iraq war, many Kurds and Kurdish political groups had supported Iran and fought against the Iraqi government. Now, in early 1988, as the war with Iran was ending, Saddam ordered Iraqi army divisions to go into the north and launch a counter insurgency campaign against the Kurds. He's basically saying like, hey, these people within our own country, technically our citizens are siding with Our enemies. So we gotta take care of it. This operation was called the Al Anfal campaign, a term which translates to the spoils of war. It lasted from February of 88 until, you know, fall of that year. And during this campaign, between 50 and 100,000 Kurds were killed while tens of thousands more were forced to leave their homes or were forcibly removed to other places. Detention camps were also built and a forced program of Arabization, as it's called, was starting. This is basically the attempt to try to make Kurdish areas more assimilated into Arab Iraqi culture. There is little doubt that Saddam effectively carried out a program of genocide against the Kurds in 1988 that I feel like not that many people talk about about. But regardless, this is just the beginning of Saddam's terror. He was about to make enemies of his reluctant allies in the Iran Iraq war, the United States and you know, other other Western countries. So during the war with Iran, Hussein's government had borrowed billions of dollars from Kuwait, a small but very oil rich country right next to Iraq. It was probably because Iraq couldn't pay back this money that Saddam decided to invade Kuwait not long after the Iran war had ended. But there were other reasons too. Kuwait had basically caused trouble with some other countries in opec. This was the group of the world's major oil exporting nations, mostly in the Middle east, by refusing to lower how much oil they produced and exported. So they were not working within sort of the diplomatic, you know, relationship that OPEC had wanted. And this was driving down the world's oil prices and hurting the profits of countries like Iraq. Finally, Iraq also claimed that Kuwait had been illegally drilling into Iraqi oil fields from an angle. So basically you have Iraq here and you have Kuwait over here. And they're saying that Kuwait is going and drilling not down into their own oil, but drilling at an angle into Iraqi oil and taking the oil from themselves, basically stealing from the Iraqi government. So this is what Saddam had claimed. For all these reasons, Iraq decides to invade Kuwait on August 2, 1990. What happened next can't really be called a war. Kuwait had almost no military, while Iraq had built up the fourth largest army in the world during the 80s and their conflict with Iran. So by August 3rd, just one day after the invasion started, most of Kuwait was controlled by Saddam's military. Just 24 hours later, the entire country was in Iraqi hand. Saddam declared Kuwait to be Iraq's 19th province. This basically got rid of Iraq's debt to Kuwait and gave Iraq a massively oil rich new region. Saddam seems to have decided to invade Kuwait because he wrongly believed that his Western allies wouldn't react since they still saw him as protection against Iran and, you know, a sort of unfriendly ally in the Middle East. And he was completely wrong about this. Within days, the United States and its allies, who by 1990 were basically running the world since the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Cold war was ending, placed economic and diplomatic sanctions on Iraq. A naval blockade of the Persian Gulf followed, which destroyed Iraq's ability to export the oil that Saddam needed to run the country and support his massive military. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher made tensions worse by convincing US President George Bush to take a strong stance against Saddam. For his part, Saddam said he would consider withdrawing from Kuwait if other territorial problems in the Middle east, like Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, were also solved. At the same time, he knew Washington would never accept the deal. He made things worse by late August by not allowing westerners expats in Iraq to leave the country. And he even appeared on TV with what were basically British prisoners. All of this was enough for the U.S. britain and others to start planning a counter invasion of Kuwait in response to Iraqi aggression. Saudi Arabia, an oil rich kingdom and a sort of rival to Iraq in the south, would be used as a base for the military campaign. The first Gulf War started after months of planning in January 1991. An aerial bombing campaign began January 16 and a land invasion followed as American and British troops poured into Kuwait. In early February, Saddam ordered Kuwait's oil fields to be set on fire. In total, out of about 730 oil wells across Kuwait, approximately 600 of them were destroyed in January and February of 1991. Although the environmental damage wasn't as bad as some scientists and experts had predicted, the resulting cloud of smoke still blocked over 80% of the sunlight through 1991. In the middle east, some areas were completely dark at noon and temperatures dropped by an average of 5 degrees Celsius. It took until fall to put out all the fires. By then, Saddam's armies had been easily defeated and kicked out of Kuwait. With operation Desert storm ending in February 28th of 1994, the US and its allies decided to stop once they had driven the Iraqis out of Kuwait. President Bush didn't want to extend the war into Iraqi territory or try to remove Saddam as Iraq's leader. That job would be done by his son more than 10 years later. So while Saddam had managed to survive his incredibly bad decision to invade Kuwait and stayed in power through the 90s, the end of The Gulf War resulted in Iraq being hit with many different sanctions by the international community. Many of these punishments were put in place right after the invasion of Kuwait and were never removed. Others were designed to stop the country from continuing to make chemical weapons or advance its nuclear weapons program, which it had many years earlier kind of started. The most damaging part of this was the US Basically organized ban on Iraqi oil exports. So as we've said, Iraq's economy and much of Saddam's power was built on selling oil around the world. And since Iraq had some of the largest proven oil fields and reserves both then and now, Although the Oil for Food program was created in 1996 to help Iraq's failing economy, the country was still very restricted in what it could import and export for the rest of Saddam's time as dictator. Much of this hurt the Iraqi people. And by the end of the 20th century century, things like, you know, salaries and child death rates in Iraq were worse than they had been 50 years earlier when the region was still, you know, like a monarchy that people were unhappy with. I mean, the living conditions at this point by the 90s were pretty bad. So while Iraq's economy was a disaster in the 90s after the Gulf War, Saddam was more firmly in control than he had ever been. The US had basically shown that it didn't want to remove him from power by not continuing from Kuwait into Iraq. And also Saddam didn't face threats from any of Iraq's neighboring countries. For the first time in over 10 years. The harsh lesson of invading Kuwait had also made him accept that Iraq couldn't try to fight wars against its neighbors anymore. Instead, in the years after the Gulf War, he focused on using Iraq's government to basically rally the population to support his regime against what he described as the aggressive Westerners who had declared war on IR Iraq in 1990, there was also a clear shift towards a more religious dictatorship. So the Baath Party had been created to establish a more secular Middle east, and they were kind of socialist. And Saddam had mostly kept religion out of his policies throughout the 70s and the 80s. But the 1990s saw efforts to use Islam to enforce stronger control across Iraq at a time when religious extremism across the Middle east was growing significant significantly. So as Iraq's economy got worse and worse through the 90s and Iraq kind of became a shadow of what it had hoped to BE in the 60s and 70s, the Hussein family dictatorship became even more deeply rooted, which is a really interesting thing that I think happens in a lot of these dictatorships. Is that as the situation actually gets worse, the dictator can then use the worsening situation as further proof that they need him now more than ever. And this was clearly shown through the actions of Saddam's two sons from his first marriage that I mentioned before, Uday and Kousse. Koussay was the younger son, but after a while, it became clear that he would probably be Saddam's successor if the dictatorship lasted long enough. He was also the head of the Republican Guard. In the early 1990s, right after the Gulf War, he was responsible for crushing a Shiite Muslim uprising in the marshland of. Of southern Iraq. After that, he caused a demographic and ecological disaster in the region by flooding these marshlands to destroy the traditional way of life for the Shiite Arabs who had lived there for many centuries. But, you know, regardless, as bad as Kuce's behavior was, it was nothing compared to his older brother, Uday. Now, Uday, like I said before, I'd already done a whole episode on, so I won't belabor the point here, but he was, you know, an alcoholic, murderer, psychopath, truly, like, just an awful human being. He threw parties in Baghdad where he would encourage other guests to get extremely drunk before and do all sorts of weird, sadistic things. He would torture members of the Iraqi soccer team if they lost matches. And by the 90s, his behavior had become so unpredictable, often showing up to parties, carrying and, you know, using guns, literally shooting guns up in the air. As everyone danced that close, family members felt threatened enough to escape to nearby Jordan because they feared for their lives. There were also many, many accusations that Uday regularly tortured his own employees by having bodyguards whip their feet. He also became known as just, you know, like a. Basically doing, like, these bridal raids where he would find, you know, women and brides, and he would, you know, go and take them for himself, like, from their husbands on their wedding day. I mean, truly sick. And there was a failed assassination attempt that left him partially disabled in 1996. But this did nothing to calm down his extreme behavior. Anyway, if you want to hear more about Uday, we have a whole episode on that now. Now time for one of the more strange parts of Saddam's story. This is perhaps one of the least known things about him, is that he started writing books in the early 2000s. And during these years, Hussein wrote four novels and several poems, often with help from some ghostwriters. And these books were either published in Iraq before he lost power or later, with encouragement from his daughters from his first marriage. And the first book was called Zabita and the King King, which tells the story of a medieval woman named Zabida who gets involved with the king of Iraq during the early days of the Arab and Muslim rule in the seventh and eighth centuries. And the novel is set around Tikrit, which is Saddam's home region, and is generally seen as a symbolic story of how US Led sanctions supposedly destroyed Iraq after the first Gulf War. Although the author was listed only as as written by he who wrote it, most people agree that it was Hussein. More books came out in 2001 and 2002, especially men and the City, which tells the story of Hussein's family's role in overthrowing Ottoman rule in Iraq during the 20th century and how the Ba'ath party later rose to power in the region. Most people agree that this book was written almost entirely by Saddam himself, since a manuscript in his own distinctive handwriting was found after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. 3. I just find it to be an interesting point that again, you have these dictators that have this desire for artistic and sort of creative liberation and they often use art to sort of illustrate their struggle. And there's been many dictators, I mean, Hitler most obviously, that used this art as sort of a channel and would write books and kind of was distilling their ideas into literature. Just an interesting sort of sidetracing tangent. Now time for weapons of mass destruction. Saddam's belief that the US was the power that had weakened Iraq and basically ruined its potential isn't completely wrong. But the way that he thought about it, I think is probably a little misguided. There's no doubt that Western sanctions against Iraq in the 90s and 2000s caused living standards in Iraq to get worse, right? I mean, if you can't export your most valuable commodity, you're not going to be as wealthy as you want were. So people couldn't get goods at all or found them extremely expensive because of the restrictions on what Iraq could import. But there's also no doubt that Saddam and his corrupt family also brought this on Iraq by failing to be honest about their efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. How severe the economic and political sanctions would be after the first Gulf War was always connected to whether Saddam and his regime would get rid of all such weapons weapons. So to be fair, in 1991, Hussein's government basically gave up all of its chemical weapons. But throughout the 90s, there was still ongoing efforts to make new weapons potentially of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons like mustard gas and anthrax, etc. UN inspectors in the mid-1990s discovered that chemicals and compounds like these had been made in Iraq in the years after the Gulf War and were most likely tested on prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. However, a later UN inspection made it clear that Saddam's regime had no effective way to use weapons of mass destruction against foreign countries. What probably turned things against Saddam in this area was that after a new UN inspection in 1998, the regime simply stopped cooperating with UN inspectors. In the end, whether or not Saddam was still trying to develop nuclear weapons or chemical or biolo weapons in the 90s and early 2000s, this became a major issue that would lead to the end of his government and his life. On September 11, 2001, the Islamic Terrorist organization Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, launched a series of attacks on the United States. Most famously, they hijacked commercial airplanes and flew them into downtown Manhattan and struck the Twin Towers. In response, President George W. Bush and his administration. Who is the son, as you probably know, of, you know, George Bush Sr. And again, George Bush Sr. Is the guy that kicks Saddam's armies out of Kuwait. Ten years earlier, George W. Bush, his son, starts the war on terror. And this was a campaign to overthrow governments in the Middle east, in the Islamic world that had supported Al Qaeda. This began reasonably with, you know, a little invasion in Afghanistan where bin Laden was, you know, being protected at the time. As soon as Afghanistan was occupied, Bush's top officials turned their attention towards Iraq, even though there was no real evidence to suggest that bin Laden had been supported by Saddam in any way. The US Justification for attacking Iraq focused on the false idea that Saddam was close to getting a nuclear weapon. The evidence was weak and would later be proven to be completely made up. This divided the Western world between those who supported and those who opposed the planned invasion of Iraq. But in the end, the Bush administration, with support from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, went ahead with their plan and began preparing to invade Iraq. In spring of 2003, Saddam's time as the country's leader was coming to an end after 25 years. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need to rebrand your crotch. That's right. 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- [70:19]
Christos
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
- [70:20]
Mark Gagnon
Now, I was looking for fun ways.
- [70:22]
Christos
To tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com on WhatsApp. No one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [71:19]
Mark Gagnon
Now, the US invasion of Iraq is what is known as the second Gulf War, and it was initially a successful military attack against, you know, Hussein and his government. The conventional war only lasted a few weeks in the spring of 2003, and a joint US British force invaded Iraq, Iraq from the south, along with small groups of troops from various US Allies. However, traditional allies of Washington and London, like France and Germany, actually criticized the invasion as an unnecessary war and just refused to participate. A bombing campaign called Shock and Awe started in mid March of 2003, and shortly thereafter, a coalition of forces made up of over half a million soldiers placed, plus Kurdish peshmerga fighters and other Iraqi groups that hated Saddam. They had decided to join the US and moved into southern Iraq. What happened over the next three weeks can barely be called a war. Once again, the Iraqi armed forces, even though they seemed strong and large on paper, completely fell apart. And you know, it's not uncommon for a military to fall apart when faced by the world's most powerful military that has ever existed. After the initial invasion, US and allied troops quickly headed for Baghdad, capturing and occupying Iraq's capital on April 9. By that time, Saddam, his family, and the Iraqi government had already fled from Baghdad. The final defenses were set up around the Tikrit region, which again, is where Saddam is from. But that area also fell to the US and their allies by April. On May 1, just six weeks after the campaign had started, President George W. Bush visited Iraq and declared an end to major combat and victory in the campaign. However, this announcement was way too early. While the Ba' Athists might have been defeated in spring of 2003, the military occupation of Iraq by the US and the British that followed created so many political and social and religious problems that there would be no peace in Iraq after the. That. The invasion of Iraq for me is. I mean, of course there's good things, right? Like Saddam was not a great guy and Uday and, you know, Koussay were tyrants in their own right and were terrorizing these people. But also the. It seemed like there was just a lot of pent up anger after, you know, September 11th. And they basically kind of saw this as an opportunity to go and, and overthrow a government that had been unfavorable to them and had been causing problems ever since the first Gulf War. So you have, you know, September 11, you go into Afghanistan for a little bit and then you are trying to find Osama. Now he's over in Pakistan. So we got some people over there and we got this guy in Iraq that sucks. So maybe we just kind of go in there and we just get him out. And you need justification in order to, you know, get Congress to pass this whole war thing. So let's just say, oh, there's weapons of mass destruction, even though there's not really. Even though in the 90s it seemed like there were some chemical weapons, but then he kind of stopped cooperating with the UN But Is he really actually making nukes? Like, that was the whole argument, like, oh, Saddam has nukes. It's like, dude, this guy's like, they have a military that's, like, decent, but, like, nuclear weapons. Like, what evidence do we have? And as we know today, there was virtually no evidence at all. And we went into this country for, you know, again, not a great country, not a great guy, but we went into this place for basically no reason. And as a result, there was a massive political and, you know, social fallout from that. But anyway, back to Saddam. As the allied forces moved towards Baghdad, Saddam, his family, and many top members of the Ba' Athist government fled from the capital and went into hiding. This even led the US army to give Marines in Iraq these, like, playing cards. And I actually talked about them in another episode, but. But they're basically a deck of playing cards that has 52 of the most wanted Iraqis. And Saddam was the ace of spades, while his sons Uday and Koussay were the ace of clubs and the ace of hearts. The two sons would be found soon. American soldiers tracked down and killed Uday and Koussay on April 9, 2003, in a gun battle in the city of Mosul after they had tried to escape to Syria. Saddam was probably already in the Tikrit region by then, where, despite one of the biggest manhunts in history, he managed to stay hidden for six months. He wasn't finally captured until Operation Red dawn resulted in his arrest in December 13th of 2003 after someone who knew Hussein told the Americans basically where he was. It was an embarrassing final hiding place for the former dictator. American troops pulled him out in a messy, dirty condition from. From what was basically just like a hole in the ground. And four days before Saddam was captured, the US Occupation government had already created the Iraqi Special Tribunal to put on trial top members of the Iraqi government and military who were accused of committing crimes against humanity and being involved in the attempted genocide of the Iraqi Kurds. I actually just spoke with a guy on the podcast, this guy, Charlie Spillers, who was the justice attache that went over to Iraq to kind of help the Iraqi government set up these tribunals to try these people that committed these atrocities. Just an interesting sort of side story. Hussein would now be tried by this same court while he waited for trial. He was moved to Camp Cropper in Baghdad and kept there with almost a dozen other senior bosses.
- [77:04]
Christos
This.
- [77:04]
Mark Gagnon
They stayed there for over a year and a half before Saddam's trial finally started in 2005, when it finally began. After this long delay, Saddam refused to accept that the court was legitimate, claiming that he couldn't be tried by what he saw as a fake court controlled by foreign invaders of Iraq. Over the next several months, he refused to cooperate with the trial, saying that he had been tortured by his captors and pointing out that one of his lawyers was killed during the trial. So because of this, Saddam went on a hunger strike in 2006. But none of his complaints worked. The trial continued without his cooperation, and on November 6, 2006, more than a year after the trial started, Saddam was found guilty of committing crimes against humanity and other terrible acts during his long time as Iraq's dictator. He was sentenced to death by hanging. So after he was found guilty and sentenced to death, Saddam's lawyers tried to appeal the decision, but this was rejected within. An order was then given that the execution had to be carried out within 30 days. According to some of the people who were assigned to guard the former dictator, his last days were very strange. The guards were a group of 12 members of the 551st Military Police Company. These guards later told stories about how Saddam spent his final days eating muffins and listening to Mary J. Blige, while occasionally telling his captors stories about his time as Iraq's ruler. He was also given a small garden that he weeded regularly. Some of his old habits as dictator were still obvious. When he asked for an omelette for breakfast, he would insist on sending it back if the outside was torn in any way when it was taken out of the pan. Besides this, he spent a lot of time on an exercise bike that he insisted on calling his pony. And it was kind of like a sad, strange final chapter to, you know, a once powerful tyrant, now just a lowly prisoner waiting for death. On December 30, 2006, the execution was carried out when Saddam was hung at Capitol justice in Baghdad, which caused certain parts of the Iraqi population to celebrate. The dictator's final meal was chicken and rice with some hot water and honey. His request to be executed by a firing squad was rejected. His body was then sent back to his home region and buried in a family plot in Tikrit. So what happens to Iraq after that? Despite the high hopes of many people in the US Government that executing Saddam and completely destroying the Ba' Athist government would turn Iraq into a functioning democracy, this transformation never happened. A temporary government was set up in June of 2004, and the country's first real parliamentary elections were were held in January of 2005. But even as these elections were happening, civil war was breaking out across the country as religious extremists like the cleric Muqdada al Sadir basically created their own private armies throughout the country and even inside Baghdad itself. Attacks on US Military personnel were happening constantly, and the administration had to create a Green zone within Baghdad, a heavily protected area that only major, the high that became basically the only major part of the country where U.S. personnel were safe from being attacked. So by 2006, when Saddam was executed, U.S. army personnel were reporting that they had basically lost control over parts of the country. A troop surge the following year helped improve the American position. But ultimately, Iraq was never transformed in the way that had been imagined. In 2000, as the US gradually left the country starting 2011, it became a center of rebellion and instability. As we mentioned before, chaos is a ladder. And as the United States sort of, you know, military and governmental stability leaves the region immediately all these other groups are trying to take power. This was most obvious when the Islamic State took control of large parts of northern Iraq by the mid 2010s. While new political unrestricted has, you know, kind of come onto the horizon by the early 2000 and twenties. So while Saddam has been gone for a long time, the political chaos that he and the Ba' Athists had sort of created as a part of his dictatorial legacy still remains. Saddam Hussein was, without a doubt, one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. He rose to power through this Ba' Athist political movement in the 60s and 70s and a movement that despite all of its problems, at least originally had, like, real ideas and had, like, a real honest sort of approach. They believed in creating this pan Arab, you know, unification and socialist ideals to help their people and help their actual countries get rich from their own natural resources and not be siphoning it off to their European colonial powers. Saddam, on the other hand, seemed like he had no real ideology or belief once he actually got power. So during the 1970s, you know, he takes control of everything. And from the 70s onward, you know, he's basically the dictator of Iraq. And his time in that position, as you know, we've mentioned, is a disaster for the Iraqi people, ethnic minorities, and, you know, anyone that's in a neighboring country. He threw Iraq and Iran into one of the bloodiest wars after World War II, one that to led lasted most of the 80s, killed, you know, almost a million people and involved the widespread use of chemical weapons. And then, of course, the genocide against the Kurds of Iraq before Invading Kuwait and the overtaking of Kuwait and then, of course, battle with the U.S. all of these actions lead to these massive international sanctions against Iraq in the 90s, which makes life even worse for the average person. And then the last 10 years of his rule are marked by more tyranny, especially shown through the brutal behavior of his sons and other members of government. So while many people questioned what the real reasons for the Bush administration and, you know, why they actually wanted to invade Iraq in 2003 and whether it was just a war to control the country's huge oil reserves, which is, you know, a claim that many people agree and disagree with, there's no doubt that it did successfully end a brutal tyrant and his regime. So maybe there is a little silver lining from the Iraq War, which I know myself and many people don't always acknowledge that, yeah, there were some good things that came out of this Gulf War invasion. So there you have it. That is the life of the dictator Saddam Hussein. The rise and the fall of a once powerful man that then is found in a hole and hung by a court of his own people. Pretty fascinating. I mean, I'm always gripped by these stories of dictators. I'm actually watching that documentary on Netflix right now, the how to Become a Dict Dictator. It's just fascinating. Like, there's just so many similarities with these guys, right? Like, there's just a, a, like a massive ego and a true belief that they are perfectly suited, whether by God or by something else in their life, to control a people and a nation unilaterally and taking control of the resources of a nation and keeping a lot for themselves and doling it out as they see fit and, you know, basically appointing their cronies to take, you know, very powerful positions. And it always seems to start off with, like, good intentions and pretty well, you know, sort of organized. Like we were talking before in a different episode about Haile Selassie, the king of Ethiopia, who at the end of his career, became more autocratic and more repressive and started to, you know, you know, exert some of his power, either directly or indirectly, that negatively affected the people living in his country, specifically ethnic minorities, you know, the Tigrayan people in Ethiopia. And the same goes for Saddam in Iraq, where he's part of this political movement that has a real desire to, you know, help people and, you know, unify this region and get rid of colonial powers. And then the second they get power, they become tyrants in their own right. Saddam, I don't know if he even was ever an ideologue. I mean, considering that the start of his career starts with an assassination like, hey, let's get rid of of this guy. He doesn't seem like he has any democratic ideals despite having phony elections in the mid-90s. It's just sad. It's sad that there's average people that are forced to live in these kinds of conditions. The average Iraqi born in the 80s, they didn't ask for this. They were just, you know, they were just put on earth in that place in Baghdad and then had to live under this psychotic tyrant. And there is still no real stability or peace in the region. And it's a shame, and partially, you know, U.S. intervention, sure. But I don't know, I just. Ever since having a kid, I've gotten very soft. And I just think about people that are suffering these places. I'm like, damn, dude, that's just so awful. And I feel grateful, to be honest with you, to be born in America with all of our faults and things that we do poorly here. Here I'm not under constant threat of foreign invasion or being rounded up by secret police, and I have freedom of speech, and I can generally do what I want and raise the family how I want to. So if you're listening to this in, you know, the west or some type of liberated democracy, consider yourself lucky. And if you're listening to this in a country that has, you know, more, I don't know, tyrannical or autocratic rulers that are kind of suppressing you. I'm sorry. I mean, that shit is pretty brutal, dude. I mean, hearing these stories about dictators, it's like, damn, these are real people. Anyway, what do you guys think? If you guys are, you know, from Iraq or from the surrounding regions, if you know a ton about this, is there anything that I missed? Any details that I don't know? Anything you disagree on as far as my opinions go? And if you're someone that had never heard the story before, what do you think? What were the takeaways for you? What did you leave this episode thinking about, please drop a comment. I read all of them and I'll see you guys next time. Peace. What's up, people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news, because we are dropping History Camp. That's right. This is the channel. We're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history. Right. You probably know about Benjamin Franklin, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson, Nicola Tesla, Interesting figures from history and you probably learned about in school when they were pretty pretty boring. But not here. No. As you know, I was raised by a conspiracy theorist, so I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous, influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will be pinned in the description as well as the comments. And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well. Just go ahead and give us a high rating because it really helps the show.
- [88:21]
Christos
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