Hussein Squandered Iraq's Oil Wealth
Dec 14, 10:11 AM (ET)
By NIKO PRICE and DONNA BRYSON
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with brutal repression and challenged the world community, but his defiance ended Sunday in his hometown of Tikrit, with the one-time dictator found hiding in a cellar with unkempt hair and beard.
Saddam came from a peasant clan in the town 75 miles north of Baghdad. As ruler, he lived in grandiose palaces, advertising himself as the loving father of a nation he dominated through fear and murder. His aura of power split the United States from its European allies over whether his downfall was worth a war.
But after a lifetime of successful brinksmanship, Saddam went too far in a final dare to the United States. He declared Americans would face a bloodbath in Iraq, but he ended up with U.S. troops not only in his capital, but ensconced in the palaces he built to glorify his rule.
In his eight months as fugitive, the 66-year-old Saddam continued to taunt American soldiers; audiotapes attributed to him that were smuggled to Arab journalists sustained the threats. In the latest, broadcast Nov. 16, the speaker urged Iraqis to drive out occupying forces with "jihad and resistance."
Thousands of Iraqis heeded his call, launching attacks that have killed hundreds of coalition soldiers and complicated efforts to rebuild the shattered nation of Iraq.
But long before the resistance, Saddam had taken an advanced and powerful nation and plunged it into war and misery.
In 1980, Saddam invaded Iran, his country's historic rival, expecting a swift victory. The inconclusive eight-year war impoverished the country and killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
In 1990 - demanding Kuwait should forgive the debts Iraq had built up during the Iran war, and driven by dreams of regional dominance - Saddam invaded his tiny neighbor.
A U.S.-led coalition drove his army out, with Iraqi soldiers surrendering in disarray. He fired missiles at Israel, hoping to rally the Arab world behind him, but the strategy failed because Israel did not retaliate.
U.N. sanctions imposed after the Kuwait invasion were meant to stay in place until all of Iraq's long-range missiles and chemical, nuclear and biological weapons were destroyed. Saddam maintained that the weapons programs had been dismantled, and months of searching by U.S. weapons experts has failed to turn any up.
While France, Germany, Russia and China were opposed to the war, President Bush - whose father, the former President Bush, was the target of a Saddam assassination plot - threw Washington's power behind the war.
Many Arab governments had quietly wished Saddam would go, and some went so far as to publicly call for him to step down to spare the region war. To the Arab world, a weakened Saddam kept in check by the United States and Britain had been preferable to an Iraq rid of Saddam by U.S. military forces.
To many ordinary Arabs, Saddam was a hero for standing up to the United States and to Israel. What his admirers often ignored or glossed over was repression that kept Saddam's 24 million people fearful and his hold on power complete.
Campaigns to suppress rebellious Kurds in the 1980s left 180,000 people missing and presumed dead. Saddam used chemical weapons to kill 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the north and sent tanks to quash dissent among Iraqi Shiite Muslims in the south. Stories of abuse, such as children being tortured in front of their parents, were rife.
His all-seeing intelligence machinery ensured that Iraqis in public showed only support and affection for their leader.
On television, to his people and the outside world, Saddam announced he would meet the U.S. challenge and pictured himself more interested in building schools and hospitals than in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
He laced his talk with Muslim prayers and referred to any war with the United States in a religious context of "righteousness" versus "evil."
Although his picture graced streets and offices in a hundred different guises, from modern-day field marshal to medieval Arab warrior on horseback, he was rarely seen in the flesh. He was believed to have spent much of the U.S.-led war in underground bunkers.
Saddam was brought up on politics by an uncle who had detested Britain for its occupation of Iraq. In his early 20s, Saddam took part in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Iraq's prime minister, Gen. Abdel Karim Qassem. In 1968, he co-engineered the coup that brought the Arab Baath Socialist Party to power.
Saddam quickly became the thug behind the new leader, Gen. Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, and the government began to purge its opponents. In 1969, more than 50 people were executed as alleged spies, among them a group of Iraqi Jews whose death sparked particular outrage in some quarters.
By July 1979, Saddam had pushed al-Bakr aside to become Iraq's undisputed leader.
Using Iraq's oil wealth - its known reserves are second to Saudi Arabia - Saddam initiated ambitious social, educational and economic reforms in the 1970s. Within a decade, he raised the nation's literacy rate from 30 percent to 70 percent and Iraq became a leader in the Arab world in health and education.
Rivaling his insistence on unquestioning support is Saddam's paranoia and ruthlessness. After ousting al-Bakr, he had 22 high officials executed, participating in the firing squad.
Saddam trusted few people other than his sons, Qusai and Odai - though Odai Saddam Hussein was considered too volatile to be told the most sensitive secrets. Qusai Saddam Hussein was believed being groomed to succeed his father. The two died together on July 22 in a four-hour gunbattle with U.S. troops in a hideout in the northern city of Mosul.
Being related to Saddam was no guarantee of safety in what one author dubbed the "republic of fear." In August 1995, two of Saddam's sons-in-law, both also his cousins, defected to Jordan with their wives. Returning home in the belief they had been pardoned, both were dead in 72 hours.
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