Talk:Saddam Hussein

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Let's not forget Saddam Hussein purposefully propogated the fraud that he had WMDs. Hussein was a good bluffer. TheRationalOne 15:30, 24 March 2008 (EDT)

But not smart enough to know when NOT to bluff. --Gulik 16:06, 24 March 2008 (EDT)

Classic brinksmanship. --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 16:13, 24 March 2008 (EDT)

Bigotry

Saddam Hussein oppressed Iraq's Shia majority population, expelled between up to 650,000 Iraqis of Persian descent during the 1970s and ethnically cleansed, massacred and culturally Arabisised Northern Iraq's ethnic minority Kurdish (culminating in the Anfal genocide and the 1991 Kurdish refugee crisis), Yezidi, Assyrian, Shabak, Armenian, Turkmen and Mandean populations. Given these actions, I think it is perfectly apt to place Saddam Hussein in Category:Anti-Shia and Category:Racists. Peadar237 01:23, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Rise to power section

What is this pointless wall of text doing here? Is there a way to say what matters in, say two paragraphs? Sheesh. ħuman 23:14, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ditto the others RWNC is adding. What is the fucking point? If I want the history, I can go to WP. Can you learn to simply make whatever points might be buried in all that dross? ħuman 01:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Saddam really did only recieve 1% of his supplies from the US!

If we have to prominently mention in the first paragraph that the US was supplying him while he gassed the Kurds, particularly in a manner which falsely implies that we sold him the chemical weapons; why is it "random nonsense" to point out this fact?

The US did not even sell Saddam conventional weapons, much less poison gas. That all came from Russia, France, Germany, and China. We only sold him military equipment and supplies.RWNC (talk) 01:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

And your sources to back this up? The Spikey Punk ^{I'm punking my punk!} 01:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/bureau/000113.html and www.tallrite.com/weblog/blogimages/refs2003/iraqarmsimport.jpg

RWNC (talk) 01:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

So a post on some blog somewhere is now supposed to convince me? Well how about that! Maybe I should start saying things on a blog somewhere so that people will believe me! The Spikey Punk ^{I'm punking my punk!} 01:51, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the point is that Saddam (arrested and killed under US guard) was at one point supported and supplied by the US. Ace^X-102 01:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

That "graph" (the jpg "source") is really lame. And the other one, while giving a "source" for their data, does it in an image so one can't copy and paste it. RWNC, are all your sources this incompetent? Because I am getting sick of their incredibly low-quality presentation. Yesterday you gave me a gif of a table that was barely readable, but from what I could tell, you also lied about what it said. ħuman 01:58, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not my fault you can't read graphs, Human. The U.S. sold Iraq $200 million in helicopters, which were used by the Iraqi military in the war. These were the only direct U.S.-Iraqi military sales and were valued to be about 0.6% of Iraq's conventional weapons imports during the war.

End of story.RWNC (talk) 02:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The jpg is ridiculous - I can read it, you idiot, but it says nothing. The other one is supported by a link that must be manually typed? What kind of fool are you, you just take junk like this at face value just because it agrees with your prejudices? PS, got cites for your latest factual claim above? ħuman 02:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Both of your sources are graphs of information taken from the same website, the Swedish International Peace Research Institute. The URL at the bottom of the first is broken, and my search of the SIPRI website yielded nothing. Try to remember that if a "source" is just a regurgitation of data from yet another source, you have to make sure that other source is reliable. Blue (pester) 02:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Not to minimize your well-put point, but, hmmm, Sweden... isn't that where the guy who wants to nominate RWNC's hero the democide guy for a Nobel for a decade lives? Hmmmm. ħuman 02:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

SIPRI is a reputable institute, they're a valid source. I did some searching on their site and was able to reconstruct the database used for the graph (you can do it by going here), so this stuff checks out. However, WP argues that the US support did not come in the form of direct arms sales, but rather in cash and secret channels that could be used to obtain the weapons from third parties. Their sources are print publications, so no links, but if this is true, then official bilateral arms sales would be a poor metric to gauge US support for Saddam. Röstigraben (talk) 08:03, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia’s claim is actually true. The US did not arm Saddam; the US gave him intelligence on Iranian troop movements, repeatedly took covert and overt military action towards Iran, worked to avoid UN condemnation of Iraq, and gave him money. Not only were US arms sales to Iraq (helicopters aside) illegal; the US ended up giving more support to Iran via the Iran-Contra affair. The US also gave Saddam false intelligence at times to engineer a stalemate. The US repeatedly urged countries not to allow shipments to Iraq that could be used for chemical weapons programs.

The article as currently written implies that we gave Saddam WMD, which is totally false and untrue.RWNC (talk) 21:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Your SIPRI link is phail. It loads, but doesn't load anything useful. Your claim that it is "reputable" is as dubious as your claim that that UHI weirdo is well-respected. Also, can you please maintain the indent level in your comments? ħuman 02:22, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Trivia

The trivia section has useful information and certainly should not be deleted. Proxima Centauri (talk) 16:37, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Covert subversion

The Covert subversion section, while fascinating, while interesting, I can't for the life of me see where ANY of it belongs in the Saddam Hussein biographical article. Let's look at some of the irrelevant absurdities:

• Kissinger, a geopolitical realist concerned with global stability but disinterested in reforming the world
• In the midst of this impasse, it was not often remarked
• The CIA ...allegedly plotted a joint US-Turkey invasion
• ...had contacts with ...and...records suggest
• The CIA would have paid a lot of money
• Saddam was apparently arrested

So by repeating the phrase, "CIA", "CIA", "CIA" 30 or 40 times in three or four paragraphs, is the reader supposed to be left with impression the CIA had something to do with Saddam's ascension to the presidency? when the text itself doesn't even say that?

So we have four paragraphs about an alleged CIA conspiracy to install a government which Saddam opposed and was arrested by, and when the group he was aligned with deposed the CIA stooges, the CIA was sent packing. Why does a convoluted tale of no relevance take up nearly 25% of this article? nobs^{I'm not from this planet, but let me tell u what I think....} 18:32, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the tale is also poorly told. To give just one example: Did the CIA "repeatedly" attempt to assassinate Qasim? Here is the relevant portion of the Church Committee report that documents what some less-than-credible authors have described as the CIA's aborted plan to kill Qasim. CIA officials requested endorsement of a plan to "incapacitate" an "Iraqi Colonel believed to be promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq" with a technique "which, while not likely to result in total disablement, would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months", but under Congressional questioning CIA officials could "not now recall the name" of the colonel in question. That does not sound like an assassination attempt, and it is implausible that CIA officials would fail to remember an attack on the Iraqi head of state. Moreover, Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general, and he did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq. Logical deduction suggests the likely target for the handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it" was not Qasim but the "outspokenly pro-communist" Colonel Fadhil 'Abbas al-Mahdawi who had been actively involved in suppressing anti-communist elements as head of Iraq's "People's Court". Contrary to the article, the Kennedy administration repeatedly rejected Kurdish requests for arms in their revolt against Qasim. The unsourced section on Kissinger's alleged betrayal of the Kurds is equally hyperbolic; there are no sources that claim U.S. support for the Kurds was intended to bring about the overthrow of Iraq's Ba'athist government. I attempted to remove this blatantly misleading material and was promptly blocked, but I will try again.RWNC (talk) 07:22, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Not only a moonbat but a wingnut too

I add Saddam to Category:Authoritarian wingnuttery because he is a Third Positionist his policy is combined both left and right. ^{— Unsigned, by: Jcthegreat1988 / talk / contribs}

That makes sense to me. He did become more right-wing with time and became more anti-communist, and also made more concessions to the Islamist right. He belongs in both.74.14.220.211 (talk) 09:40, 31 May 2020 (UTC)