Saddam Hussein, born on 28 April 1937, in Al-Awja,
Iraq, was an Iraqi President and Dictator.
A member of the Ba'ath political party, he was instrumental in its
rise to power in Iraq in 1968. Throughout the 1970s he consolidated his power
in the country, before formally taking over in 1979. His policies espoused a
mixture of Arab nationalism and socialism.
Hussein's dictatorship was exceptionally brutal,
with the total number of deaths from purges and genocide conservatively
estimated at a quarter of a million people. In 1980 he invaded neighbouring
Iran which started a ruinous eight-year war that led to no border changes and
hundreds of thousands of war dead on both sides. In 1990 he started the Gulf
War by invading and annexing Kuwait before being removed by an international
coalition led by the United States.
Through the 1990s Iraq suffered from UN sanctions
and isolation. Beginning in the early 2000s under the presidency of George W.
Bush,
Hussein was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction and
was deposed in a 2003 invasion. Though no weapons were found, he was tried of
crimes against humanity and executed in 2006.
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