• PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Dude, Saddam Hussein committed genocide against his own people. It’s well documented and is why the United Nations authorized unilateral force against the country back in 1991, as well as a 15-year no-fly zone across most of the country.

    He also gassed the Kurds repeatedly. And his brothers were a psychopaths. Well, they all were.

    Uday was in particular a great guy:

    “he was guilty of rape, murder, and torture, including the arrest and torture of Iraqi Olympic athletes and members of the national football team whenever they lost a match.”

    And

    “Uday also ordered the kidnapping of Ilham Ali al-Aazami, Miss Iraq, after she had rejected him. Uday and his bodyguards subsequently held her captive and raped her for weeks, and started the rumor that she was a prostitute, causing her to be killed by her father. When the father confronted Uday, the latter spoke disparagingly about the girl, causing the father to lose control to the point of first verbally accosting and ultimately physically assailing Uday. This prompted Uday to order Latif to shoot the father — rather than acquiesce, Latif instead refused and attempted to commit suicide. Ultimately the father was murdered by one of Uday’s bodyguards.[76] On another occasion, Uday attacked a newlywed couple and raped the bride in the al-Medina Hotel. She then committed suicide by throwing herself off the balcony. Her husband, a lieutenant, was later killed for “insulting the president”.[76]”

    These were the people who were ruling Iraq for decades. I really wouldn’t want to be making excuses for people like this. But, you do you!

    • generalpotato@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Read my comment again. I’m not making excuses and Saddam didn’t need to exist beyond the moment in time the first time he took a human life.

      The point which you missed was that we have the ability to take out tyrants without having to cause 30k civilian casualties and decimate towns/cities. We didn’t do that, we went blood thirsty and inflicted so much damage on a sovereign nation and its citizens that it created a generation of Iraqis and people in the broader region that hates the US.

      We took out OBL and have toppled numerous regimes without using excessive force.

      This whole notion of us taking out Saddam because of us being some benevolent nation for good is complete bullshit. We went in there for oil and because Saddam didn’t let us have it, so we made it a point to take him out by any means necessary, using the WMDs cover-up.

      The US has a history of getting cozy with dictators and letting them kill and pillage their own people as long as it serves our interest.

      The Iraq “war” was a massive fuck up and mistake. Nobody should be decorated for it.