how did Saddam Hussein influence his nation in a good or bad way???
917966
Saddam Hussein was no doubt a brutal dictator, but the country was more stable with him in power. Like most dictators, Saddam's never ending fixation was his own security. An author named Tony Horowitz traveled to Bagdhad in the eighties and discovered even discussing the weather was not allowed, due to "tactical" security during the long war with Iran. I noticed many of the people responding to this question have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to point out the horrors of his regime. In America we have a tendency to do this to try to remind ourselves that what we did in Iraq was the right thing. \nThe thing is, though, that Reagan and his cronies had absolutely no problem with Saddam. From Europe and the United states, he recieved many of his weapons of mass destruction, such as biological weapon spores and double acting chemicals that were turned into poisonous gasses. \nOne can never forget about the atrocities of Hussein. There are too many to even comprehend or understand unless you lived during his rule. But many Iraqis had access to medical attention, education, and steady work during his reign (though at different times, this could change, especially during the years of UN sanctions).
278599
OMG are you serious!!!! Saddam killed people of his own country if they blinked wrong. i am really praying for you cause you are definetly not the sharpest tool in the shed and its people like you who should move to canada and never come back saddam was an evil man and killed innocent people just to see how many ways he could!!!!I wish people like you would open thier eyes and see wat is real.
222453
Forget all the things you hear about democracy and justice, who helped Saddam Hussein become powerful in the first place? Who sold him weapons? (Haven't you seen that video of Ramsfeld & hussain shaking hands?) It's just that the politions (Bush & friends) didn't need him anymore, he was no longer a obedient little boy, and ofcourse, president Bush needed more oil!
608915
Just watch the movie, UNCLE SADDAM.  It's a "lighthearted" look at the "butcher of Baghdad".\n\nWhat happens to dictators is that they begin to believe they are the "master of all they survey".  In Saddam's mind, Iraq is HIS.\n\nOne of the questions posed to him in the movie was why he spent all this money building palaces while people starved.  His answer was typical of a self-deceived tyrant: if they spent all that money on bread, they would have too much bread.  He also said that people shouldn't work just to have bread to eat.\n\nOne respondant denied he is stupid.  Saddam is often clever, cagey, and insightful.  However, the reason he was so successful was not by being smart, but by being relentlessly brutal.  You can accomplish a lot if you don't care what happens to anyone.\n\nStupidity is not recognizing the obvious.  While everyone else can see that he is leading his country in the wrong direction, he can't.  That's stupidity.\n\nMaybe idiot is the wrong word for Saddam. He is certainly a psychopath (A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.)\n\nLike one of your other respondants succinctly replied: he believed his own press.
874737
I'm out here in Iraq and trust me... please trust me when i tell you that it's not all the same or to prevent genocide. Keep in mind that most if not all countries were forged by wars. Specially our great U.S. of A. Need less to say that I pray  everyday for myself and my brothers and sisters in arms because Sh!t is going to hit the fan once saddam is executed...Once more this is nothing like Hotel Rwanda, nothing all,
148410
I think there's little doubt about that.  The only reason the country was stable for so long was Saddam Hussein.  Oppresive dictatorship is a highly effective way to hold together a country that should be torn appart by different factions all vying for control.  Iraq is made up primarily of three groups: the Shi'it Muslims, the Sunni Muslims, and the Kurds.  If I remember correctly, the Sunni's have most of the money, but most of the population is Shi'it (I may have reversed the two, though), and neither group is too fond of the Kurds.  Under Saddam, you had the wealthy elite repressing the both other groups.  Now it's revenge time.  No way it's going to be stable.  Besides which anyone who's actually elected president by any kind of majority vote we're going to through out as too religious and too anti-American (guess what, they don't like us very much).
108029
I do believe that the ex-iraqi regime wasn't good at all , it was totally vicious and a real evil , but , please , is it a US leader who meant to correct that ? no and million no , i prefer saddam husain than what america did over there , it was a big lie , they wanted oil for israel,  why should they do that and lose millions of millions ? because simply US is actually ruled and govern by israel , israeli rich people are all in US and they have the US economy in their hands , bush couldn't refuse that ,  yes all those who talked about mass distruction weapons were liers and  america won't do the same with iran because it would be a change point in the history when iran kick US ass-es , NOW  FOR ALL THOSE STILL BELIEVE US ADMINISTRATION : PLEASE , DO U FEEL BETTER WHEN YOUR FAMILIES MEMBERS ARE DYING IN IRAQ IN A WAR THEY WEREN'T SUPPOSE TO HANDLE , ARE YOU HAPPY WHILE IRAQI INNOCENT CHILDREN AND WOMEN AND OLD MEN BEING KILLED WITHOUT ANY MERCY FOR NO CLEAR REASONS ? COME ON I DON'T WANT THAT FREEDOM WHICH DAMAGING A COUNTRY AND MAKE IT EVEN WORSE THAN WHAT I HAS BEEN , PLEASE , AND HONESTLY  , LET'S CONFESS , YOUR DMINISTRATION LIED A BIG LIE , AND YOUR PEOPLE , OUR PEOPLE ( MUSLIMS) , ARE THE REAL VICTIMS , WE DON'T HATE YOU , YOU DON'T HATE US , YOUR ADMIMINSTRATION ARE DOING THINGS LIKE THAT .... THINK AGAIN ,,, AND BE CAREFUL IT'S WON'T BE LIKE THIS NEXT TIME ..\n\n\nTHANKS FOR THE ASKER
568621
1) Saddam was in Iran not Iraq.  So to talk about him is a different topic.\n2) Don't you think that if the Iraqi radicals stopped trying to demolish Iraq and allowed a safe and stable government that the American military would be able to leave.\n3) Hey guys, do you like watching girls walk down the street in shorts and little bitty tops, do you like girls in bikinis?  Girls, do you like to dress the way you want?  Do you think that was happening in Iraq?\n4) Do you think you could have spoken out against either the governments of Iran or Iraq and been allowed to live a normal life.\n\nBefore you shoot your mouths off, think about what has been happening in Iraq, think about torturing of people under Sadam.  Better yet, go move to the middle east and then come back in a few years and run your mouth some more.
801906
Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, 8 miles (13 km) from the Iraqi town of Tikrit in the Sunni Triangle, to a family of shepherds. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son "Saddam", which in Arabic means "One who confronts". He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who disappeared six months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterward, Saddam's 13-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. Saddam's mother also tried to abort the baby by attempting suicide. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three.[4]\n\nHis mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return. At about the age of 10, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle, Kharaillah Tulfah. Tulfah, the father of Saddam's future wife, was a devout Sunni Muslim. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his closest advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, a militant Iraqi nationalist. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalistic secondary school in Baghdad. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter.\n\nRevolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The stranglehold of the old elites (the conservative monarchists, established families, and merchants) was breaking down in Iraq. Moreover, the populist pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence the young Ba'athist, even up to the present day. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser challenged the British and French, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically.\n\nIn 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim.[12]\n\nSaddam was shot in the leg, but escaped to Tikrit with the help of CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents. Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred to Beirut for a brief CIA training course. From there he moved to Cairo where he made frequent visits to the American embassy. During this time the CIA placed him in a upper-class apartment observed by CIA and Egyptian operatives. (UPI 'analysis' article)\n\nHe was sentenced to death in absentia. Saddam studied law at the Cairo University during his exile.\n\nRead more... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein
163817
If there is a possiblity for this strange thing to happen this will only brings another massacre, Saddam is a dictator, not an ordinary one, he is a murderer.\nHe has used chemical weapon against Iranians and his own people and he has done a massacre against Shiia people.\nMany people has died in his prisons.\nIraqi people really hate him, thats one of the reasons Iraq conquered by US troops easily, do you remember how much resistance done in Tikrit, origin of Saddam? You should know that Tikrit is a small town around Baghdad, imagine if all cities resisted that much.
357188
Politics is a question of time and timing.\n\nIran was considered a bigger threat at the time than Iraq.  I agree that the American military must have known about the atrocities within Iraq at the time but they were far more concerned with supporting Iraq against Iran so that a fundamentalist super-state didn't arise in the region.\n\nI think if Saddam hadn't got ambitions outwith Iraq (in order to get out of economic chaos) then the situation would not have escalated as it did.\n\nI really feel for the general people of Iraq as they have jumped from the horror of Saddam to the chaos of post war ... regardless of the reason for it.\n\nPeace out
773951
It's a bit late to reinstate Saddam, but maybe now stupid Americans can understand why he was a successful ruler.   As for him gassing Kurds....well DUH, they were his political enemies, and that's what dictators do: they destroy their opponents.   I'd like to add that as many as 600,000 Iraqi civiilans have died in the present conflict, so what's worse?   To be destroyed by your own government, or a foreign invader?
1187630
well you know I have some friends that came back from Iraq not to long ago and they tell a different story then what i see on TV.  They talk about how its a vary small percent of the people that cause the problems, most of them are glad Saddam is gone and are working hard to make there country a better place.  He told me about a bombing were some one blew them self up in a line for the Iraq police recruiting, everyone helped the people that were hurt and killed in this attack, then when they were done, all of them just got back in line. they believe so much in making things better even the threat of being blown up didn't stop them.\n\nyou might also want to pick up a book by I believe the name is General Georgia Sada (at work or I would check and give you the ISBN#) Saddam's secrets.  Its about an Iraqi general and how he helped move the WMD's out of the country before the war, interesting book.
841781
Yes, the United States of America and her allies must all pitch in and help rebuild Iraq. When Saddam Hussein first came into power, he was Mr. Nice Guy but once the 1980's came around, he went from being Mr. Nice Guy to becoming Mr. Not So Nice Guy and started to build palaces for himself and had his people live in ruins. Not that Hussein is no longer the President, Iraq is moving everyday towards democracy. If you want to hear the Truh of the Democracy taken shape in Iraq, I recommend that you watch a show titled The 700 Club.
789887
It's much worse after. Saddam is evil. Everyone was afraid. When we invaded and captured Saddam, Iraq was a leaderless country. A very easy target and a logical choice for terrorists to occupy. Three years later there is still major upheaval throughout. \nReally, how can a country that has lived under dictatorship, know exactly what all a democracy truly means? Most of us who are used to a democratic republic don't completely understand. We need to begin our exit strategy soon. \nThere are basically three groups of different people living in Iraq. None of them can agree with the other two, nor do any of them trust one another to be fair and impartial to the rest. Without impartiality, and fairness a democracy is doomed to fail.
1183255
The French are one of the main countries that were helping arm Saddam and making illegal oil deals with him while he was under sanctions from the UN.I think you should find out what your own country has been up to before you comment on mine.
585574
Iraq is and will be in civil war weather we leave there now or in a hundred years so it does not matter when we leave. The strongest will take the power and will run the country as they see fit and that is just the way it is. I was against the war to begin with, we have no business telling another country how to run their business, no matter how bad a leader that they have. I agree that Saddam is and was a bad man but that is Iraq, and we are the United States and we have plenty of problems with a bad leader right here.