Saddam Hussein and Arab Socialism--his legacy: was it positive or negative?

[Adi Shankara]

Read some interesting shit on wikipedia about this, and his achievements as president of Iraq, some of which, are pretty damn impressive, and make me question the reports that his government was completely genocidal and evil:


The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed according to the labors of the individual and the unskilled were trained. The government also doubled expenditures for agricultural development in 1974–1975. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standard of the peasantry and increased production.


Before the 1970s, most of Iraq's people lived in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised, and roughly two-thirds were peasants. This number would decrease quickly during the 1970s as the country invested much of its oil profits into industrial expansion.


To diversify the largely oil-based Iraqi economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iraq), Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining), and developing other industries. The campaign revolutionized Iraq's energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.


Within just a few years, Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Educational,_Scientific_and_Cultura l_Organization) (UNESCO).

Then again, I never really did like The US version of Iraqi events. but overall, he doesn't seem like that bad of a leader. to be honest, if all of the above is true, I'd actually say he was a pretty damn good one. I know this is not the whole story, and I know very little about Saddam Hussein, so I was wondering if anyone else has opinions they could lend. Was he a geniune socialist?

[Saorsa]

Are you serious?!?

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

From what I know, his actions were polar. In other words, they were very good or they were very bad. I know that he helped to develop Iraq from where it was, but I also know that he treated certain people like crap... Overall though, I think his death and the Iraq war were nothing more than Bush the younger trying to win the fame of his father thanks to the Gulf War...

[Adi Shankara]

Are you serious?!?

Yes. I really dont' know that much about Saddam Hussein, which is why I'm not blindly praising the man, and asked for information on him. I just want to learn more about this, and get the opinions on him. Western Propaganda lies alot about leaders we attacked, and makes them look at them as if they are all bad--and I'm just wondering if it is all lies about his regime being oppressive and what not.

I really don't know much on the subject. I just saw that on wikipedia and found it really interesting that he and his party did all this.

[ed miliband]

I heard that he gave people in menial, low-paying jobs important job titles and then tried to say Iraq was a classless society.

[Adi Shankara]

I heard that he gave people in menial, low-paying jobs important job titles and then tried to say Iraq was a classless society.

I heard alot of things about him too--but most of them were untrue. I mean, on one hand, you can see alot of the propaganda his regime gave to his people and attempted to create a cult of personality, which is a negative thing--on the other, from the way it looks, he seemed to have brought Iraq's economy into the modern age. and greatly improve the standard of living in Iraq.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

Saddam was a U.S. puppet regime up until the moment we invaded. He was obviously a murderer and monster, but like all things in the world he was not 100% good or bad.

Most likely Saddam would have been overthrown by his own people if the U.S. hadn't kept him in power and no he obviously was not a socialist. If you are asking whether genuine arab socialism has been good like Nassir and Gaddafi, that is a much more complex and interesting question but I think it deserves it's own thread instead of this abomination.

[Palestine]

Yes, Tom this is true, Saddam Hussein wasn't a bad leader like the American media tries to show him, he did kill people who revolted against him, and traitors, but still he was a socialist. You should also check the Syrian socialism which until recently there were no private companies as in large private companies, maybe small ones, everything was for the state, except for land-lots and Housing which was privately owned.

[Catillina]

He still grinded down the minortities, like the Kurds and Schiits.
But it's true that he achieved a certain modern state in Irak.

[Palestine]

Ok I need to clear things out. Thanks to imperialism, and Sykes-Picot agreement, they drew the borders for Arab countries, Kurds were left stateless, so they want their own state, which lies between Turkey-Iran-Iraq-Syria, now each of these countries need to donate a big piece of land, so they just refused, and in Iraq they have an autonomous government, but still they tried to revolt against the system, so Saddam crushed them.
As for the Shiites they are in fact the majority, but because of the long war between Iran-Iraq, they were oppressed because they lean for Iran.
As for all of the above, it is all true, indeed Saddam's state was until a certain point a US puppet state, but they became enemies, Saddam was a socialist, he made great achievements in his country, economy did well, and to study in Iraq was like going to Harvard or Oxford.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

Yes, Tom this is true, Saddam Hussein wasn't a bad leader like the American media tries to show him, he did kill people who revolted against him, and traitors, but still he was a socialist. You should also check the Syrian socialism which until recently there were no private companies as in large private companies, maybe small ones, everything was for the state, except for land-lots and Housing which was privately owned.

He was a socialist in the same way Zenawi is a socialist or any other tinpot dictator propped up by the United States is. Some "leftists" will really defend anyone who gives a shoutout to the word socialist :rolleyes: Assad in Syria was different and was sort of socialist (whatever that means in a feudal society) but secularism is largely dead in the middle east and as an atheist and marxist I say for good reason.

[khad]

Yeah, sure, he was a socialist. He just had to kill all those un-hip Iraqi communists to establish his co-ops.

[Sir Comradical]

Please don't use 'Saddam Hussein' and 'socialism' in the same sentence in that way. The man was a rightist military dictator...

[Glenn Beck]

Saddam was a ruthless bastard that was more than happy to butcher Communists, Iranians, other Baathists and Iraq's various national minorities; nevertheless he might have been the most progressive leader of modern Iraq (not much competition for the title, to be sure) in terms of the social and economic development of the country. Arab socialism, again, from my limited understanding was a movement that might have had considerable potential for achieving independent development in the Middle East but ultimately fizzled badly and went out with a whimper.

[Palestine]

Well Slavoj Zizzle
Secularism will never work out in the Middle East, because simply religion is so much mixed with the culture. People are sensitive when it comes to religion as simple as that!

[Glenn Beck]

Well Slavoj Zizzle
Secularism will never work out in the Middle East, because simply religion is so much mixed with the culture. People are sensitive when it comes to religion as simple as that!

You might have said the same of Europe a century or two ago.

[Palestine]

Please don't use 'Saddam Hussein' and 'socialism' in the same sentence in that way. The man was a rightist military dictator...

Excuse me, look at communists who do it, you still call them communists though they are not so why is Saddam any different??
Stalin & Kim Jong Il
We still consider communists while they are not.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

Well Slavoj Zizzle
Secularism will never work out in the Middle East, because simply religion is so much mixed with the culture. People are sensitive when it comes to religion as simple as that!

Arab Socialism could have worked out imo if Israel had lost the 67 war. The biggest issue has always been Israel, and pan-arabism backed by Nasser looked like it was gonna do well for a while, especially after 56. Once Nasser failed to contain Israeli occupation, while the rest of the world did nothing, that was the end. The selling out of the PLO to the west was the last gasp of secularism in the middle east, and as long as Islamism continues to successfully defy the U.S. and Israel it will remain popular for good reason. Of course if the U.S. left the region Islamic fundamentalism would collapse within the year, but we'll see what the future holds. There's nothing fundamental about Arabic culture that makes it prone to Islamic fundamentalism, in fact for most of history they were way more secular than the west.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

Excuse me, look at communists who do it, you still call them communists though they are not so why is Saddam any different??
Stalin & Kim Jong Il
We still consider communists while they are not.

Stalin was undoubtedly a communist. Arguably Kim Il Sung had communist ideas, though like most arabic socialists and african post-war leaders he was a nationalist and tried to develop an extremely poor country. It just so happens that socialist systems are the only way to develop a country from poverty. Kim Jong Il is definitely not a communist imo, he's simply a leader trying to maintain a country that is surrounded by enemies, has no resources, and has faced terrible economic and political conditions since the collapse of the USSR. Not to imply he doesn't do terrible things, but like pretty much every situation in the modern world the condition of North Korea is directly at the feet of the United States and it could be much worse over there.

[Palestine]

Not to imply he doesn't do terrible things

EXCUSE ME, are you even living on this planet????? Kim Jung Il is a fucktard who fuck's his own people for the sake of his fine Hennessey, so don't tell me he doesn't do terrible things, he has labor camps, and he turned himself into a sort of divine figure in NK, people worship him.

[Dimentio]

Read some interesting shit on wikipedia about this, and his achievements as president of Iraq, some of which, are pretty damn impressive, and make me question the reports that his government was completely genocidal and evil:


Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath were brought into power by CIA support to replace a left-leaning military dictatorship. In the Arab world and Africa, almost all political factions need - or needed - to call themselves socialist in some form.

Hitler also did some impressive things for Germany in 1933-1939. Ba'athism is nothing else than Arab fascism. Its founder, Michel Aflaq(?) created it after a visit to Germany in 1935.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

EXCUSE ME, are you even living on this planet????? Kim Jung Il is a fucktard who fuck's his own people for the sake of his fine Hennessey, so don't tell me he doesn't do terrible things, he has labor camps, and he turned himself into a sort of divine figure in NK, people worship him.

The United States has labor camps, Obama is fucking his own people to line the pockets of lobbyists and wall street, and Obama has a cult of personality which got him elected on some of the most outlandish and dangerous ideas to exist in a campaign (post racialism as an example). See the power of rhetoric? You sound like Glenn Beck dude, try not to accept everything the media tells you. NK is pretty awful, but it is no worse than dozens of other dictatorships which are directly supported by the United States. The difference is NK doesn't listen to us. Oh and the awful conditions of NK are our fault, don't forget NK was doing better than SK in the 60s until we were able to successfully isolate it and watch it slowly die from a lack of arable land, a drought, and the collapse of it's biggest trading partner.

[Palestine]

2 wrongs don't make a right, no I am totally for NK's people, but not Kim Jung Il who now wants to grant his kid, WHO WAS EDUCATED IN SWITZERLAND, the country to rule.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

2 wrongs don't make a right, no I am totally for NK's people, but not Kim Jung Il who now wants to grant his kid, WHO WAS EDUCATED IN SWITZERLAND, the country to rule.

Actually there's only 1 wrong, and that's the imperialism of the United States which inevitably creates these conditions in impoverished countries. Basically I'm not sure what you're saying or who you're ranting against, since no one in this thread supports NK but I would hope all of us support the right of a sovereign nation to resist imperialism and capitalist looting and destruction. To bring it back to the thread, in the developing world, being able to resist capitalism is basically the only thing that matters and secular arab socialism was not able to do that while Islamic Jihad has arguably done more to harm global capitalism than since the Russian Revolution.

[Sir Comradical]

Excuse me, look at communists who do it, you still call them communists though they are not so why is Saddam any different??
Stalin & Kim Jong Il
We still consider communists while they are not.

Saddam never claimed to be a Communist/Marxist. He used to kill Communists back when he was on the CIA payroll.

[Sam_b]

Yes, Tom this is true, Saddam Hussein wasn't a bad leader like the American media tries to show him, he did kill people who revolted against him, and traitors, but still he was a socialist. You should also check the Syrian socialism which until recently there were no private companies as in large private companies, maybe small ones, everything was for the state, except for land-lots and Housing which was privately owned.

Sorry to be the usual stereotypical dick, but this is one of the most worthless posts i've seen apart from Psy. "He wasn't a bad leader apart from killin the people who opposed his rule", well fuck me he sounds like the progressive sort of guy we can ally with huh

[Wanted Man]

2 wrongs don't make a right, no I am totally for NK's people, but not Kim Jung Il who now wants to grant his kid, WHO WAS EDUCATED IN SWITZERLAND, the country to rule.

Oh no, not Switzerland!!!

[Sam_b]

I would have thought being educated in Switzerland would have been the least of the concerns.

[RadioRaheem84]

C'mon guys. Saddam was CIA from the very beginning. He was ordered to kill a real Iraqi leader named Qasim who had lifted the ban against the ICP. Saddam then went on to kill the leftist wing of the Baathist Party in a 'Night of Long Knives' sort of way.

He was just another Noriega type that later on refused to take orders from the US. He implemented a few reforms which modernized Iraq and quelled the Islamic radicalism coming from Iran, but after the fall of the Shah, Hussien replaced him as a stalwart against Khomeni.

[GreenCommunism]

2 wrongs don't make a right, no I am totally for NK's people, but not Kim Jung Il who now wants to grant his kid, WHO WAS EDUCATED IN SWITZERLAND, the country to rule.

this is fucking bullshit man. http://dprkforum.com/2009/06/02/path-to-succession-do-not-jump-the-gun-on-kim-jong-un/

saddam hussein and baathism is national socialism with no racial supremacy,eugenics etc. it had much more similarity with socialism than nazism.

i personally don't see that much of a crackdown in iraq, can someone tell me the exact number of people killed and jailed? of course he did a shitload but it's not comparable per population to stalin's 800 000 execution purges.

i think saddam hussein would have stayed in power for awhile because of his advance in the living standard of people even if he was a brutal dictator. i personally feel that the cia played their cards wrong when they got a left-leaning military dictator out for another.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

this is fucking bullshit man. http://dprkforum.com/2009/06/02/path-to-succession-do-not-jump-the-gun-on-kim-jong-un/

saddam hussein and baathism is national socialism with no racial supremacy,eugenics etc. it had much more similarity with socialism than nazism.

i personally don't see that much of a crackdown in iraq, can someone tell me the exact number of people killed and jailed? of course he did a shitload but it's not comparable per population to stalin's 800 000 execution purges.

i think saddam hussein would have stayed in power for awhile because of his advance in the living standard of people even if he was a brutal dictator. i personally feel that the cia played their cards wrong when they got a left-leaning military dictator out for another.

I can't tell if this post is a joke but national socialism IS NAZISM! That's what it stands for and it has little to nothing to do with actual socialism. The role of racial supremacy and eugenics is vastly overstated in fascist ideology, we obviously brought it to the forefront to minimize our own racial discrimination post-WW2 and come out as the good guys (referring specifically to the U.S.). In fact, the creator of fascism, Mussolini, didn't really care at all about race or anti-semitism. Also way to simultaneously defend the right wing dictatorship of Saddam while spewing right wing propaganda about Stalin. The messages here are so contradictory this has to be a joke post :mad:

[Blake's Baby]

As many have said, he was a CIA-backed dictator. He also started the Iran-Iraq war, which killed about 1.5 million people. And he gassed the Kurds, using weapons supplied by the West.

At the same time, he was a 'moderniser' in that he wanted to build up Iraq's infrastructure and he was also a secularist (at least until a lack of friends in the region drove him into alliance with the Islamic radicals). But are these things, when coupled with a warmongering authoritarian nationalism, at all progressive? No; he was a fascist in the same way Mussolini was a fascist - he believed in a corporate state, a strong military, and massive vanity projects in order to make himself look important. Only, Mussolini was a catholic and Saddam was at least on paper a secularist (until the early-1990s I think).

[Barry Lyndon]

My parents visited Iraq in the 1980's three times, because my mother his half Iraqi and had family there(still does).
It is true that the Baathist regime was not all bad, In fact it was quite positive in the first decade or so when Saddam was not in the picture(1968-79)- the Baathists developed the country and brought large parts of it out of the Middle Ages into the 20th century, remaining more or less economically independent from foreign powers while they did so. Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq had a large, educated, quite secular middle class. Women were doctors, school headmasters, engineers, etc. Religious sectarian differences were of minor importance- for many years prior to 2003, roughly 50% of all marriage lisences in Baghdad were for Sunni-Shiite marriages. The Iraqi dinar was actually worth more then the US dollar in the 1980's, my mothers Iraqi relatives actually felt sorry for the income she had at the time.

However, the dark side of this is all true. The progressive elements of the Baath Party-the Communists, the socialists, the trade unionists-were systematically purged from the ranks of the government by Saddam Hussein and his followers. When my parents were staying in Baghdad, they saw a CIA official, a guest of the regime, proudly declare on Iraqi state television- 'Saddam is a great guy. He's killed a lot of communists'. The Soviet amabassador to Iraq estimated that about 15,000 Iraqi communists were executed or died in prison.

Saddam built up a true totalitarian state, complete with a cult of personality. My parents noticed his pictures on buildings, on billboards, on watches, everything. My mother visited a school and witnessed children about 6 or 7 years old sing 'Saddam is our father, Saddam protects us'- like something out of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

Testimony of Iraqi communist who waged a guerrilla struggle against Saddam Hussein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb1GIoWYEhQ

[RadioRaheem84]

Arab Baath "Socialism" was akin to National Socialism. Remember that the only laws that the US occupation force did not rescind was the laws concerning labor unions.

[Dimentio]

this is fucking bullshit man. http://dprkforum.com/2009/06/02/path-to-succession-do-not-jump-the-gun-on-kim-jong-un/

saddam hussein and baathism is national socialism with no racial supremacy,eugenics etc. it had much more similarity with socialism than nazism.

i personally don't see that much of a crackdown in iraq, can someone tell me the exact number of people killed and jailed? of course he did a shitload but it's not comparable per population to stalin's 800 000 execution purges.

i think saddam hussein would have stayed in power for awhile because of his advance in the living standard of people even if he was a brutal dictator. i personally feel that the cia played their cards wrong when they got a left-leaning military dictator out for another.

The Ba'ath regime did improve the standards of the ordinari Iraqis between the years of 1968 and 1980, before Saddam's invasion of Iran. Thereafter, Iraq saw a steady decline in life standards for everyone except for the clans around Tikrit, the security apparatus and the army. The regime was characterised by constant endemic corruption, and it is likely that Saddam and his sons would have been removed by the Iraqi military had not the American military done the work for them.

Saddam was already in the picture 1968 to 1979, before he became president. He was the true strongman of Iraq by then, even though he wasn't an autocrat yet.

Ba'athism is not national socialism in the German sense. It is more akin to Italian fascism.

I could recommend you to read dr Ala Bashir's book on Saddam Hussein and his regime.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well Saddam showed his true colors once sanctions hit him hard and he instead focused the rest of his governments revenue on lavishing himself and his family in a princely fashion. There went modernization! Whereas the Cuban government, sanctions and all, still managed to maintain a modicum of decent standard of living for it's people.

[Chimurenga.]

EXCUSE ME, are you even living on this planet????? Kim Jung Il is a fucktard who fuck's his own people for the sake of his fine Hennessey, so don't tell me he doesn't do terrible things, he has labor camps, and he turned himself into a sort of divine figure in NK, people worship him.

With this post and your username, are you trying to be ironic?

[Adi Shankara]

With this post and your username, are you trying to be ironic?

No, he really does live in Palestine.

[gorillafuck]

He initially took power as a fascist puppet of the United States (yes, he was a fascist) and he massacred countless numbers of people, particularly socialists and trade unionists.

[Chimurenga.]

No, he really does live in Palestine.

That's not what I'm implying at all.

[Red Commissar]

saddam hussein and baathism is national socialism with no racial supremacy,eugenics etc. it had much more similarity with socialism than nazism.

One of the pamphlets that was distributed during the Iran-Iraq War was entitled something along the lines of "Three creatures Whom God should have not created: Flies, Persians, and Jews". This was also distributed to school children.


i think saddam hussein would have stayed in power for awhile because of his advance in the living standard of people even if he was a brutal dictator. i personally feel that the cia played their cards wrong when they got a left-leaning military dictator out for another.

Would you wish that on yourself, or are you just looking down on the third world?

Saddam did institute public works programs and social programs, made vastly easier on account of having one of the world's largest collection of oil fields under state control. Though of course Hitler and Mussolini also lay claim to similar achievements; should we go pronounce them as socialists as well?

I have news for you: being a socialist means more than some token nationalizations and public works and services. If those are your standards, you need to go back to the basics of socialism... the means of production and workers for one thing...

Never mind that one of Saddam's core principles was based on the superiority of his ideal "Arab". One that was above the tribal divisions of Arabs (unless they happened to be his family of course), the inherent genetic inferiority of the Marsh Arabs (i.e. the Shi'a Arabs), and the Kurds.

And this cherished "socialist" of the OP went on the Anfal Campaign and ended up killing at least 100,000 Kurds in the course of this "routine" military operation. Unless genocide needs to become a part of the requirements of being a socialist nowadays... :rolleyes:

And as others have mentioned- Saddam and the Ba'ath party in general were puppets of the CIA for the longest time, and in doing so destroyed the real revolutionaries of Iraq. Saddam sold out Communists and Socialists of all shades and played into Washington's strategy of counter-acting Soviet influence in the region, one they established already with Turkey, Israel, and the then friendly Kingdom of Iran. Trade Union activity was severely restricted and workers were nothing more than cattle in Saddam's Iraq, kept placated by Arab nationalism.

And Saddam's 'secularism', while it already began on flimsy standards, reintroduced a dose of religion into the Iraqi government following the first Gulf War. A "socialist" putting "God is Great" on his nation's flag? Nice standards.

That crap lifted from the Wikipedia article is biased as hell. I've read it as well and its idiotic. Hitler's article takes time to describe advancements and the horrors committed under his regime. Saddam's article is absent of this.

I've noticed a tendency among some people to get swoon by leaders like Saddam (and indeed it was repeated with Slobodan Milosevic as older comrades have told me) by actions of theirs that appeared "socialist" to them and thinking they were standing against Imperialism.

We should not confuse our positions of anti-war and anti-imperialism with becoming apologists for people like Saddam Hussein.

The one legacy that Saddam left in this nation was dark hearts in many people. All the major ethnic groups hold a type of nationalism built on their narrow conceptions, one of their respective group being inherently better than the others. Saddam kept tensions bottled up rather than going about on solving them, because his claims of "brotherhood" was merely the hegemony of his interests over the state apparatus of Iraq, much like Milosevic's Serb nationalism covered up by claims of preserving Yugoslavia.

[RadioRaheem84]

Modernization obviously takes a lot of state intervention into the economy. Look at the US during the post war boom. Largely Keynesian and provided generous subsidies and public works contracts to private industry. It was not socialist though.

Fascism operated on a plane that was similar, as anyone with a brain can figure out that if you inject money into a failing economy for social spending that you're going to get an increase in living standards. But this is not what makes someone a socialist. Hussein did not attempt to change the social relations in the workplace and did not care for direct democratic control of the commons or the commanding heights of industry. I mean Nazi Germany almost mirrored a social democratic state economically but was as brutally repressive as any US client state during the Cold War.

What the US was dealing with was a real deal fascist of the Franco/Mussolini stripe with elements of Arab supremacy. Once the Shah fell victim to the Iranian Revolution, Saddam took his place as a bulwark against Iran and Communism.

[Leo]

I want to clarify some points here. First of all, at the time of the 1963 coup d'etat again Abdulkerim Kasim, Saddam Hussein wasn't the main person or the leader of the Baath Party - someone else, Ahmed Hassan el Bakr was. Saddam Hussein himself rose to the leading position only in the 70ies, when el Bakr was getting old and replaced him as president a few years before he died.

Also, while it is true that the Baath Party of Iraq at times acted as an American proxy faction, this was not the case always. Throughout the seventies, the Iraqi regime had immensely close relations with the USSR. The Communist Party of Iraq itself was not only allowed to operate legally, but also incorporated into the official ruling regime and stayed there until 1979 (in Syria, the Communist Party is still a part of the official Baathist regime). The relationship between Iraq and the Soviets was defined as one of strategic partnership, and the Soviets gave their full support to the Iraqi regimes massacre of Kurds in mid seventies. The Kurdish nationalist armed groups, of course, were supported by Pahlavi regime in Iran, which itself was very close to the Americans. The developments in Iran concerning the Pahlavi regime certainly had a great part in making the idea aligning with the Americans much more attractive to the Baath regime in Iraq.

The Baath Regime in Iraq was as socialist as all the states which claimed to be socialists at the time. Certainly, they were no less socialists than the USSR who were aiding them in massacring the Kurds in the 70ies. It was a rabidly nationalist regime, again like all the other self-proclaimed socialist regimes of the day. Did any of these brutal, murderous states claiming they were socialists have anything to do with socialism is perhaps a more appropriate question. Just as many allegedly communist or socialist statesmen did, Saddam Hussein ended up siding with the Western powers; he did it before the fall of the Eastern block because of the local imperialist rivalry with Iran, but like the others he did it when and because it suited his interests.

And, to respond to one point in the original post, certainly it is not a lie that the Iraqi government was extremely genocidal. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were murdered systematically during the al-Anfal Campaign with chemical weapons, and even now bodies are coming out. About a hundred thousand Shiites were also massacred. One of the main people behind the genocide, Chemical Ali, was so infamous that even in Turkey, I know many Kurds who followed his recent trial and were glad to see him executed, even if under these circumstances. Obviously, to anyone who went through these events or even followed it in the region, questioning whether the Baathist regime in Iraq was genocidal or not would result in a reaction similar to the one Holocaust deniers often get in the Western world.

[Scary Monster]

EXCUSE ME, are you even living on this planet????? Kim Jung Il is a fucktard who fuck's his own people for the sake of his fine Hennessey, so don't tell me he doesn't do terrible things, he has labor camps, and he turned himself into a sort of divine figure in NK, people worship him.

You do know pretty much all of this is bullshit right? I used to believe all that until I started questioning all the crap we are told about NK, especially until i met someone whos actually been to north korea. Take everything you hear from the western media with a grain of salt.