Editing Ba'athism (section)

===[[File:Cball-Iraq.png]] Iraq [[File:Hussein.png]]===

====[[File:SaddamHussein.png]] Rise of Saddam Hussein====

[[File:SaddamHussein.png]] Saddam Hussein at the age of 20 joined the revolutionary pan-Arab [[File:Baath.png]] Ba'ath Party in [[File:Cball-Iraq.png]] Iraq, after dropping out of law school.  In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General [[File:Abd_al-Karim.png]] Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew [[File:Moncap.png]] Faisal II of Iraq in the 14 July Revolution. The Ba'ath Party was originally represented in Qasim's cabinet. The party turned against him for his refusal to join [[File:Nasser2.png]] Gamal Abdel Nasser's United Arab Republic (UAR).  Qasim created an alliance with the [[File:ML.png]] Iraqi Communist Party, which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism.

After participating in a failed assassination plot to kill Qasim, Saddam moved to [[File:Cball-Egypt.png]]  Egypt. On 8 February 1963, while Saddam still was in Egypt, army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party under the leadership of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr overthrew Qasim, marking the start of the Ramadan Revolution; A 9-month reign of terror to purge Iraq of communists, with the financial and tactical support of [[File:CIA.png]]  CIA. 

The Ba'athist regime came to a temporary end later that year in the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état by the non-Ba’athist faction in the Iraqi government. Saddam was arrested in October 1964 and served approximately two years in prison before escaping in 1966.  The same year Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr appointed him Deputy Secretary of the Regional Command. In September 1966, Saddam proved to be an extraordinary challenge to Syrian domination of the Ba'ath Party, resulting in the Party's formalized split into two separate factions.

In July 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr in the 17 July Revolution that saw the Ba’athists regain control of Iraq. Saddam proceeded to carry out purges of Nasserists, communists, and others that didn’t adhere to Ba'athist ideals. 

The Ba’athist regime inherited an Iraq long plagued by divisions and tensions along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus [[File:Shia.png]] Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant. The desire for stability led Saddam to pursue both massive repression of dissent and the improvement of living standards through extensive [[File:Socauth.png]] welfare [[File:Welf.png]] programs and large-scale infrastructure projects.

In 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, dominated the country's oil sector. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to further gain support from the masses through economic improvement. 
While Saddam was a staunch [[File:Anticommunism.png]]  anti-communist himself, he maintained and deepened Iraq’s already close ties to [[File:Cball-USSR.png]] the Soviet Union [[File:Brezhnev.png]]. This greatly infuriated the US which feared loss of control of the Middle East and began to covertly finance [[File:Cball-IraqiKurdistan.png]] Kurdish rebels led by [[File:KDP-icon.png]] Mustafa Barzani with the help of [[File:Pahlavi.png]] Pahlavi Iran during the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War to overthrow Saddam’s regime. The Kurds were defeated in 1975 at the hands of the Iraqi government, leading to the forcible relocation of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians. 

In 1976, Saddam rose to the position of general in the Iraqi armed forces and in 1979 became the President of Iraq. Only 6 days after his accession to the presidency, Saddam initiated another large-scale purge, mass arrests, and public executions of hundreds of Ba’ath party officials he perceived to be a threat to his rule. The trials and executions were televised for everyone in the country to prevent anyone else from getting any ideas to challenge Saddam’s  [[File:Totalitarian.png]] monopoly of power.  

====[[File:Cball-Iran.png]]  Iran-Iraq War [[File:Cball-Iraq.png]]====
Following the 1979 [[File:Khom.png]] Islamic Revolution in [[File:Cball-Iran.png]]  Iran, which overthrew Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran-Iraq relations dropped to a new low as the new Iranian regime’s [[File:Shia.png]] Shia Theocracy stood in contrast to Saddam’s Sunni dominated Ba’athist dictatorship that suppressed Shia clerics.  There were frequent clashes along the Iran–Iraq border throughout 1980, with Iraq publicly complaining of at least 544 incidents and Iran citing at least 797 violations of its border and airspace.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini openly called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba'ath government with the intent of spreading the Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East. Iran supported a government in exile for Iraq, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and recruited POWs, Shias, Kurds, and other dissidents that had been oppressed under Saddam’s regime. 

Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980. The Iran-Iraq War quickly became a subject of foreign interest groups and the world’s leading nations who sought to ensure that neither Iran nor Iraq would get the upper hand in the war. Iraq's three main suppliers of weaponry during the war were [[File:Cball-USSR.png]] the Soviet Union, [[File:Cball-China.png]] China [[File:DengXiaoping.png]] and [[File:Cball-France.png]] France [[File:Gaullismicon2.png]] in addition to [[File:Cball-US.png]] the US [[File:Reagan.png]] [[File:CIA.png]], [[File:Cball-UK.png]]  UK [[File:Thatcher.png]] [[File:MI6.png]], [[File:Cball-Portugal.png]] Portugal, [[File:Cball-Germany.png]] West Germany, [[File:Cball-Saudi.png]] Saudi Arabia [[File:HouseOfSaud.png]], [[File:Cball-UAE.png]] [[File:Cball-Kuwait.png]]  the Gulf States and many other countries. Many of the aftermentioned countries supplied Iran with weapons at the same time. 

Saddam would spend much effort near the end of the war in 1988 with clearing out Kurdish resistance. The Ba’athist regime initiated the Anfal campaign a genocide of Iraqi Kurds using chemical weapons that would result in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.
The Iran–Iraq War was the deadliest conventional war ever fought between regular armies of developing countries with a total of over a million casualties on both sides. The war also led to the massive destruction of critical infrastructure and severe economic loss for both sides with Saddam’s regime losing almost all legitimacy and support from the Iraqi people it had gained during the past decade of economic prosperity. 

====[[File:Cball-UN.png]] [[File:GHWB.png]][[File:Clinton.png]][[File:Cball-Saudi.png]] [[File:Cball-Kuwait.png]] 1990s [[File:Hussein.png]]====
As the Iran-Iraq War had come to end in 1988, Saddam’s Iraq founds itself ridden with debt, much of it was owed to Kuwait which refused to forgive the debt at Saddam’s request. Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production which kept oil revenues down for Iraq. In early 1990, Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum through cross-border slant drilling. 

Unable to come to an agreement that would suit both parties, Saddam began to prepare Iraq for an invasion of its southern neighbor. The invasion started on 2 August 1990, marking the start of the 2nd Gulf War and within two days, most of the Kuwaiti military either being overrun or forced to flee to neighboring countries.  Immediately following the invasion, Iraq set up a puppet government known as the "Republic of Kuwait" to rule over Kuwait, eventually annexing it outright, when Saddam Hussein announced a few days later that it was the 19th province of Iraq which he partly justified by irredentist reasons. Iraqi forces proceeded to crack down mercilessly on Kuwaiti resistance to the occupation through the arrest and executions of thousands of suspects. 

The Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait were unanimously condemned by all major world powers. On 3 August 1990, [[File:Cball-UN.png]] the UN Security Council passed Resolution 660 condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and demanding that Iraq unconditionally withdraw all forces deployed in Kuwait.

To manufacture public consent for war with Iraq the US government under President [[File:GHWB.png]] George H.W. Bush used the public testimony of a 15-year-old teenage girl, Nayirah (A secret member of Kuwait’s ruling al Sabah family) who testified in front the US Congress that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.

At the start of the following year US along with a coalition of many other countries including but not limited to [[File:Cball-UK.png]] UK [[File:JohnMajor.png]], [[File:Cball-France.png]] France [[File:Cball-Egypt.png]] Egypt [[File:NDP(Egypt).png]], [[File:Cball-Saudi.png]] Saudi Arabia [[File:HouseOfSaud.png]], and [[File:Cball-Syria.png]] Syria [[File:Hafez al-Assad.png]] etc. launched a massive military assault on Iraq and Iraqi forces stationed in Kuwait. As the Coalition quickly gained the upper hand the Iraqi military set fire to 700 oil wells as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991. On 25 February, Kuwait was officially liberated from Iraq. 

The [[File:Clintonism.png]] Clinton Administration (1993-2001) that took office after Bush II Administration became committed to a policy of regime change to remove Saddam from power through the use of UN-enforced sanctions, and covert support for Shia and Kurdish dissident groups and during 7 years after the liberation of Kuwait, President [[File:Clinton.png]] Bill Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998.

====[[File:GWB.png]][[File:Cheney.png]][[File:New Labourism.png]][[File:Cball-IraqiKurdistan.png]][[File:IslamicDawa.png]][[File:LiberalParty.png]] Iraq War [[File:Hussein.png]]====

Ok,