Maybe, Just Maybe, Good Was Done?

[pparaska]

At first, all I could find were links to (of course) the atrocities that the US coalition have put on the Iraqi people (sigh - dirt on the US SELLS!).

 

After looking around a bit, I found that that most liberal bastion of the WHITEHOUSE.GOV (snicker) had this:

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030404-1.html

 

Of course, they mention "Human Rights Watch". Oh, boy, I had to get a beer to be able to read some of the hand wringing there about how badly we're treating the Iraqi people (PULEASE!). Anyway, the recent stuff on that sight about Iraq, is of course how the new Iraqi government and army are commiting human rights violations. Then if you dig deeper in time you begin to find the real stuff on Saddam's regime's reign of atrocities:

 

http://hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq1104/4.htm#_ftnref47

 

"During the past thirty years, the government of Saddam Hussein engaged in three wars and numerous campaigns to repress the Kurdish, Shi`a, and Marsh Arab populations, resulting in the disappearance—and, most certainly, the deaths--of between 250,000 and 290,000 people.47 By February 2004, the Combined Forensic Team of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had collected information on 259 mass graves in Iraq. Of these, U.S. military criminal investigation teams had conducted preliminary assessments of fifty-five sites by February 2004.48"

 

http://hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq1104/4.htm#_ftn47

 

There's a bunch more.

 

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cnn-iraq.htm

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/iraq0205/

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/02/26/iraq10216.htm

http://hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/basra/index.htm

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/02/16/iraq10185.htm

 

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/11/24/iraq9725.htm

"Of the dozens of potential defendants, only 12 have been brought before a judge so far – by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq instead of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. As a result, the defendants have been charged only for crimes that are punishable under Iraq’s penal code. That is why Saddam Hussein has not yet been charged for international crimes such as genocide.

 

Much evidence has been lost. Coalition forces failed to protect mass grave sites and government ministries that housed important state archives. Looting, and the digging up of mass graves by families desperate for evidence of relatives who “disappeared†under the Ba’athist regime, have destroyed or tainted a great deal of material that would have been critical to prosecutions."

 

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/11/04/iraq9589.htm

 

I've not seen this movie, but this guy lines up with my thoughts over the Main Stream Media's slanted coverage of the Iraq issue, and the protestors:

 

http://www.iraqitruthproject.com/

 

Well, he says its a documentary, but he has an agenda. Same thing as Moore (who on this site claims his 9/11 isn't a documentary, more of an oped.)

[johnc]

http://democracyiniraq.blogspot.com/2005/03/2-years.html

 

Before March 20, 2003, we were in a dungeon. We did not see the light. Saddam Hussain was crushing Iraq's spirit slowly, we longed for his end, but knew we could not challenge him, or his diabolical seed who would no doubt follow him and continue his generation of hell on Earth.

 

Since then, we now have hope. Hope is not a tangible thing, but it is something, it is more than being blinded by darkness, by being stuck in a mental pit without any future.

 

Hope has been the greatest product of the last two years. No doubt, many have died, many have died by accident or due to crimes. But their sacrifices are not, and will not be for nothing. I refuse to let it be, and my countrymen stand with me.

 

Our cities are smoking, our graveyards full, and terrorists in our midst. But we are not defeated. We are not down, we are not regretful. We are not going to surrender. For all that the two years have brought, the greatest thign they have given us is a future, and a view of the finish line.

 

Iraqis see the finish line, the finish line of freedom and democracy and a functioning nation. We can smell it, taste it, and like a sprinter, one who has broken his legs, but who has a heart full of passion, we will crawl there no matter what the cost. No matter what we must endure, we have realized what we can become, and that is the biggest result of the last two years.

 

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2005_02_01_healingiraq_archive.html#110796789338865795

 

Apart from a minority that would rather burn down the country than see someone else in power, I am confident that most Iraqis are weary of all the violence, chaos and bloodshed. It is therefore the utmost duty of Iraqi politicians, the occupation authority and the international community to seize upon the moment and to quit beating around bushes.

 

It is time to involve the Iraqis themselves, to give them the final word. Iraqis do not wish for their country to be a "frontline on the war of terror", as Bush recently stated. Iraqis do not wish for their country to be a battleground for reactionary bearded cavemen waging their holy wars. Iraqis do not wish to be fuel for the wars of neighbouring countries. Iraqis want to live and let live. Iraqis want what you have.

 

http://ayadrahimtriptoiraq.blogspot.com/

 

What distinguished the session, was that, for the first time in Iraq's history, all speeches and announcements (except the oath of office) were made in Arabic and Kurdish (some, summarized in English, too), and that the outgoing leader of the current government, Dr. Ayad Allawi, in, essentially, peacefully handing over the reins of power, spoke about the accomplishments of his government. Another first, was Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, in beginning his speech with religious greetings, included the words "the followers of Muhammad," a reference to the Shi'a imams, which was followed by the response from some of the assembled, in the same. Hakim also pointedly cited the recent massacres in Hilla and Mosul, and called on the governments of Jordan and neighboring countries to stop the recruitment of terrorists and their crossing the borders and killing Iraqis.

 

Most speakers honored the dead of Halabcha, the bombing of which, with chemical weapons, began, 17 years ago, today, as well as the rebels of the March 1991 uprising, and those who perished and suffered under the 35-year dictatorship of Saddam Hsayn. Several of the speakers, most notably, Allawi and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, thanked the multi-national forces, naming the United States, Britain and a dozen other countries, for liberating Iraq, and also those who made the elections and this meeting possible, especially, Ayatollah Ali il-Sistani and the Iraqi police, national guard and electoral commission.

 

The session was carried live by, among others, Al-Hurra, al-Iraqiyya, al-Furat, al-Arabiyya, Diyar and Sumeriyyeh, and was followed, preceded and interspersed with in-studio commentary and man-on-the-street reactions.

[JMortensen]

Pete, your post gives a lot of details about Iraqis being safer today than under Saddam, something I'm interested in finding out more about. Could you link a study or something done on death rates before and after? I looked a few months ago, and the only study I found (comparing current with pre-war death rates) said the chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before. It was in the Lancet medical journal and was based on interviews with Iraqis, most of them doctors. From what you said though, there must be more info on the subject I haven't seen.

So are you saying that when Saddam tortured and then murdered people the doctors would have seen the victims? Seems kind of silly to expect tortured or executed people to be seen by a doctor.

[Michael]

Just one question....

 

In the past two years, approximately how many Iraqis (soldiers and civilians) have been killed as a result of war, terrorism and/or insurgency?

[tannji]

I doubt there are any solid figures on that.... bodies just turn up... leaving you to wonder how many have been kidnapped or murdered without us knowing. The insurgents seem to favor sending messages by these methods.. I doubt we will ever know for certain.

[Guest Phil1934]

From jmortenson's post. One of the Oxford group does this site.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

[JMortensen]

I doubt there are any solid figures on that.... bodies just turn up... leaving you to wonder how many have been kidnapped or murdered without us knowing. The insurgents seem to favor sending messages by these methods.. I doubt we will ever know for certain.

This site has reasonable methods to acquire their figures: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/. They only count "civilian" deaths, how one knows if a civilian is an insurgent is beyond me, but they show a high of 19,432 "civilian" deaths. They are openly against the war too, FWIW, but at least their methodology seems sound. They also have an article that has some half-handed analysis of the 100,000 dead we continue to see reported. The IBC says that figure is a projection. Kinda like the 50,000 people that die from second hand smoke in the US according to "the Truth" (if you believe that I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you).

[pparaska]

I don't have time now to look into the quote of 58 times the chance of violent death, but me thinks that if you were to follow the money, it is based on some far left wing liars.

Brad L. Maaske, creator of the Documentary Film, 'WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION -- THE MURDEROUS REIGN OF SADDAM HUSSEIN' http://www.iraqitruthproject.com/ quotes 1.3 million killed by Saddam's regime before we got there 2 years ago. Whether that is accurate is a question I have. But something tells me that it'd be difficult to kill as many people as his regime did in 35 years in the 2 years we've been there. It's not like we've carpet bombed the country or anything.

[pparaska]

This site has reasonable methods to acquire their figures: [url=http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/]http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/[/url']. They only count "civilian" deaths, how one knows if a civilian is an insurgent is beyond me, but they show a high of 19,432 "civilian" deaths. They are openly against the war too, FWIW, but at least their methodology seems sound. They also have an article that has some half-handed analysis of the 100,000 dead we continue to see reported. The IBC says that figure is a projection. Kinda like the 50,000 people that die from second hand smoke in the US according to "the Truth" (if you believe that I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you).

 

Yeah, listening to body counts from a leftist website is very dangerous.

 

I totally agree with your assertion that telling an insurgent from a non-hostile civilian is just about impossible, unless we are talking about small children.

 

I don't know if any of you remember Saddam warning us in the final days of the fall of Bahgdad that we were about to see a new and interesting form of warfare. I fully believe what he meant was the non-uniform wearing tactics of the insurgents, etc. Body counts as to who died (were they combatants or not) becomes incredibly difficult if you don't know what is in the mind of the person you find dead without a uniform on.

 

20000 in two years is a huge number of people to die in a country even as populous as Iraq. But just how many of those are enemies of not just the coalition, but peace loving Iraqi's. How many are deaths of peace loving Iraqi's killed by insurgents because they were designated as coaltion collaborators. WE'LL NEVER KNOW. One thing is for certain at this point - the people of Iraq now has a reason to have hope- one they haven't had for 35+ years.

 

Yeah, the Iraqi people would have been so much better off it we just left Saddam's regime there to continue their atrocities and kept the people of that country living under the cloud of fear and no personal freedom that that had.

[pparaska]

To back up my assertion that IraqiBodyCount.net is leftist or anti-Iraqi "war" note, or follow the links surrounded by RED:

 

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/contacts.htm

 

"The IRAQ BODY COUNT Project Team are:

HAMIT DARDAGAN (Co-founder, principal researcher and site manager) is a freelance researcher currently working in London. He has made an in-depth study of the research methods of Professor Marc Herold, who pioneered a media-based methodology for estimating civilian deaths in the Afghan war of 2001-2. He has written for Counterpunch, and has undertaken research for a number of organisations, including Greenpeace. He has been chair of "Kalayaan" a human rights campaign for overseas domestic workers in the UK, which led to significant enhancement in their legal rights.

 

JOHN SLOBODA (Co-founder, associate researcher and archivist) trained as a research psychologist and is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Keele, UK. In 1999-2000 he worked with the Committee for Peace in the Balkans, and researched effects on the civilian population of the NATO bombing campaign. Since September 11th 2001 he has been responsible for the daily peaceuk.net mailing list disseminating critical non-violent perspectives on "the war on terror". He is a founder member of the Network of Activist Scholars of Politics and International Relations (Naspir), and a local delegate to the Stop the War Coalition. He is currently Web Resources Manager for Peace News, and in January 2004 was appointed Executive Director of Oxford Research Group.

 

KAY WILLIAMS (Senior researcher and archivist) is a recently retired librarian, who worked most recently as Head of Acquisitions in Keele University Library. She runs a mailing list for those in the Keele and Newcastle-under-Lyme area of Staffordshire who are interested in local and national anti-war activities.

 

BÜLENT GÖKAY (Project consultant) is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University. He is co-founder and core researcher of the Keele Southeast Europe Unit. He has authored many books and articles on global politics, the Middle East, Balkans and Central Asia, including A Clash of Empires: Turkey between Russian Bolshevism and British Imperialism (1997), The Politics of Caspian Oil (2001), Eastern Europe Since 1970 (2002), and The Most Dangerous Game in the World: Oil, War, and US Global Hegemony (2002), and is co-editor of the forthcoming book, War, Terror and Judgement: 11 September 2001 (Feb 2003).

 

TORBEN FRANCK (Webmaster) is a musician and peace activist. He is webmaster for www.peaceuk.net, www.humanshields.org as well as Iraq Body Count. He has recorded a track (with Joe Wilson) for the recent Stop the War CD compilation, issued in December 2002. He is a delegate to the Stop the War National Conference.

 

MARC HEROLD (Research consultant) is an Associate Professor of Economic Development, International Affairs and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire, USA, where he has taught since 1975. He holds a Master's degree in international business and finance and a Ph.D in Economics from the University of California in Berkeley, as well as an engineering degree in electronics from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic University. He has focused his writings upon social and economic changes in the Second and Third Worlds and his current research interests are on Brazil and Afghanistan, including the latter country's post-war situation. In December 2001 he released a widely cited study of the human costs of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting"), updates to which may be found at: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold.

 

GLEN RANGWALA (Legal consultant) is a lecturer in politics at Newnham and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge University. He is trained in political theory and international law. His doctorate, from Cambridge University, was in political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. He is also published on a number of other themes, including international humanitarian law, comparative human rights law, Iraq and nuclear weapons.

 

DAVID FLANAGAN (Technical consultant) is author of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (among other standard works) and wrote the JavaScript code for Iraq Body Count that keeps our Web Counters updated while making them easy for webmasters to install.

 

PETER BAGNALL (Tech consultant & user support) is currently a postgraduate student at Lancaster University studying computer science and psychology. He spent two years working as a software design consultant in Silicon Valley, and before that four years as a network research engineer for British Telecom. His professional interest is using technology to provide real benefit to society, rather than just to develop flashy gadgets. His thoughts on ethics, politics and technology can be found on his website.

 

TRANSLATORS FOR PEACE is a free association of translators from all countries and of all nationalities. The Association was founded in 1999, during the Kosovo war, by a group of Italian translators who decided to dedicate a portion of their time to translate and publish information regarding the costs of modern technological wars in terms of human lives, the environment, democracy and human rights.

 

ERIC CLARKE (Assistant researcher) is professor of music at the University of Sheffield, where he does research and teaching in the psychology of music. He was an active member of Camden CND in the 1980s, and is a member of Amnesty International.

 

NIKKI DIBBEN (Assistant researcher) is a lecturer in music at Sheffield University where she carries out research into music perception, and gender representations in popular music.

 

JOSHUA DOUGHERTY (Assistant researcher) is a guitarist, private instructor and a graduate student in music at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

 

MARIANNE FILLENZ (Assistant researcher) is senior research fellow in neuroscience at St Anne's College Oxford and retired University lecturer in Physiology. She was a member of the national committee of Scientists against Nuclear Arms (SANA) and is a present member of Scientists for Global Responsibility.

 

CHARLIE FORD (Assistant researcher) was awarded a doctorate for his holistic critique of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte in 1989 and has since published on popular music. He is an active member of Amnesty International and an occasional contributor to peaceuk mailings.

 

JORDANA LIPSCOMB (Assistant researcher) is a retired litigation attorney and mother of two. Supporting member and event coordinator of Musicians Opposing War (MOW). She received her Bachelors of Arts degree from New York University in Russian Language and her Juris Doctorate Degree from Southwestern University School of Law. She is currently researching the legalities and criminal implications of this war and welcomes information and sources on this subject.

 

SCOTT LIPSCOMB (Assistant researcher) is a co-founder of Musicians Opposing War, a collective of Northwestern University faculty, staff, & students in the United States who came together for the purpose of expressing opposition to the War on Iraq, who believe that U.S. military aggression is likely to increase - not deter - terrorism on American shores, and who advocate seeking non-violent solutions to the world's problems through a consensus of peace-minded nations. Scott is an Associate Professor in the School of Music at Northwestern, where he teaches in the Music Education and Music Cognition programs and carries out research related to the processes involved in music listening and their affect upon the listener. He is also co-author of "Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development" (2003, 4th edition, Prentice-Hall) and has been extremely concerned about the lack of response to this issue from the musical community. The recent appearance of organizations like Musicians United to Win Without War (Russell Simmons, Rosanne Cash, Michael Stipe, Dave Matthews, Peter Gabriel, Suzanne Vega, and others) is a welcome occurrence and hopefully only the first of many more that will follow.

 

DARELL WHITMAN (Assistant researcher) is a post-graduate student with the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment at Keele University. He holds a Master’s degree in Government from California State University, Sacramento, a Master’s degree in Political Sociology from Southern Oregon University, and a Juris Doctorate in law from the University of Santa Clara. He is an attorney licensed to practice law in California and U.S. federal courts. He has been a long-time peace and environmental in the U.S., and served on the national organizing committee of the Emergency Committee to Stop the War (Gulf War I) from 1991-1992.

 

ROWAN WILLIAMS (Assistant researcher) is a graduate in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge. For a number of years she was Justice and Peace representative for the Anglican Community of St Francis, and a member of the steering group of the Justice and Peace Links of the interdenominational Conference of Religious. She is currently training for the priesthood in Cambridge."

 

 

Let me see, do they have an axe to grind?

[JMortensen]

They obviously do have an axe to grind, but at least their methodology is somewhat sound. They take death statistics coming from hospitals and only from hospitals, not polls of Iraqis then multiply like the 100,000 figure to determine the death rates. I do recall some reports of doctors inflating death reports in the first part of the war to try and evoke more backlash against the war here in the US and in Europe. I'm not saying their numbers are accurate, but at least it would appear on the surface that they are attempting to be accurate. They could fling credibility out the window and jump on the 100K bandwagon, but they haven't.

[pparaska]

I'm not convinced that the doctors are not making numbers up anymore. But, I'll take it with just a grain of salt that they aren't, instead of a handful.

 

The problem is knowing out of who's dead on the gurney, whether they are an innocent victim (unless a small child) or an insurgent, etc.

[johnc]

The "100K Iraqi" deaths and the "58 times greater risk of dying" figures are based on a study titled, "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" published in volume 364 issue 9448 page 1857 of The Lancet. The link to the study in PDF form is here: http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.364.9448.primary_research.31264.1&x=x.pdf

 

That study (and the figures it produced) have been debunked repeatedly in many places with Slate magazine (hardly a conservative institution) being the most well known: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/

 

And from another site that discussed the study and the study author's incorrect use of CI:

 

Regarding the update to the post regarding the confidence interval for the 100,000 figure for casualties in Iraq, Mr. Ujeio is close, but not entirely correct in his assessment. In fact, his interpretation of confidence intervals is a common misconception -- one which I often find in teaching and tutoring econometrics.

 

In non-Bayesian statistics, it is the interval that is random, not the population parameter of interest. The correct interpretation for, say, a 95% confidence interval around a given unknown parameter (in this case, the # of casualties) would be that the interval contains the true number about 95% of the time.

 

One cannot correctly claim that there is a 95% probability of the true number of casualties lying between the bounds of the interval. These bounds are now fixed, and thus the probability that the true parameter lies between these bounds is either 0 or 1 -- in other words, it is in there or it is not.

 

Based on this information, is it technically incorrect to claim that 8000 or 194,000 would be "rare" events. Instead, the correct conclusion, as in the "debunking" article by Kaplan, is that we can be 95% confident that the true number of casualties lies between the bounds. It says nothing of the probability of any of these outcomes.

 

Another way to think about this is in the form of a hypothesis test, in which the null hypothesis is that the true number of casualties (call it y) equals x. Based on the confidence interval, we would not reject the null hypothesis that y=x (against the alternative yx), based on our sample evidence, so long as x lied between the 8000 and 194000 bounds. In other words, our test produces exactly the same results for testing the hypothesis that the true number of casulties is 8,000, 100,000, or 194,000...namely, do not reject.

 

Note that we do not "accept" the null hypothesis, either...in statistics, one looks for evidence against the null, but there are many null hypotheses consistent with the data. A great quote on this that might provide some illumination to an illustrious law professor comes from Jan Kmenta in his 1971 Elements of Econometrics book...

 

"...just as a court pronounces a verdict as 'not guilty' rather than 'innocent', so the conclusion of a statistical test is 'do not reject' rather than 'accept."

 

I should note that this is turned on its head in a Bayesian framework...but I'm not as familiar with these methods. In closing, yes I know I'm an econ geek and should be doing something much more fun on a rainy Saturday afternoon in CA.

 

Cheers,

 

Craig A. Bond

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

University of California, Davis

[crazy280]

1) The 1500 dead soldiers, and the soldiers dying in Iraq every day are no less honorable than any other soldier in our history. But their deaths were avoidable. How come everytime someone says "we should preserve the lives of our soldiers" a republican accuses that person of "dishonoring the troops". Wierd...

 

2) I'm hardly a pacifist. I stand my ground and I believe in fighting for what is right (and unfortunately this has led to a few street fights I'm NOT proud of). However, I try to be a good christian, and the teachings of Christ are what guides my conscience.

 

3) I'm not letting my "feelings" blind my thoughts. I am a very logical thinker. I simply did not want to have to repost all the arguements I've made, and others have made, in past threads regarding the Iraq war. Quick summary: Republicans always try to defend the war by stating the positive results of it. They are basing that argument on the belief that war was the only way to go about getting those results, which is false. And since I try to be a good Christian, I would have chosen the less bloody alternative. There are numerous threads on this site about the same topic, I'm not trying to restart that argument.

 

4) You keep mentioning random deaths around the world- maybe you missed the point. Our government did not kill those people, or send them to die. Our government DID declare war preemptively on Iraq, resulting in thousands of deaths, and an insurgancy sure to cause thousands more. It is arguable whether or not to blame our government for the murders Saddam committed, since we were the ones who put him in power originally. However, our government chose the bloody path to take him out. Like it or not, that's a cloud.

[johnc]

Were you responding to me, Pete, or Jon? I checked back and I didn't see where someone was jumping down your throat, but maybe I missed something.

 

FYI... ALL of us should keep this thread civil, it really has the potential to start a flame war but so far we've been pretty good about it.

[crazy280]

Mainly Pparaska. Just sounded that way, maybe he didn't mean it that way. It's hard to tell on a text forum. Sorry.

[Guest Phil1934]

And after all, iraqbodycount never claimed to be a "non-partisan orginization"

[tannji]

I dont think we should overlook the fact that Saddam did in fact have options other than facing us down. Had his primary concern been humanitarian issues and proving we were wrong about WMD, he could have done so quite easily, and made the US look a little foolish at the same time. Fact is he took a gamble and lost. Wasnt a really bad gamble, on the surface, because it was hard to imagine a leader of the US having the determination to do what GWB did.... but we are left with two little factors as a result.... Saddam is gone.... and other like-minded leaders have since re-adjusted their strategic thinking as it concerns the US and its willingness to project force. For that matter, our allies, who are quite busily making efforts to patch up their relations with the US, will be making the same adjustments to their thinking. It might not be pretty, but GWB's actions have changed the rules and the conditions beyond what we can immediately see.

[johnc]

It is arguable whether or not to blame our government for the murders Saddam committed, since we were the ones who put him in power originally.

 

A distortion of the truth. The US, through the CIA, supported the Ba'ath Party's coup in 1963 but did not directly support Saddam and probably didn't even know he existed. He was in exhile in Cairo after a failed 1959 attempt to assasinate Kassem. At most Saddam was considered a minor party thug and assasin.

 

Two months after the successful coup Saddam returned to Iraq from exile and worked as an assasin and thug for the Ba'ath Party while officially an interrogator in the Fellaheen and Muthaqafeen detention camps.

 

In the late 1960's the Ba'ath Party started leaning towards the Soviet Union (as a result of the six day war) and in 1972 actually signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation. At that time Saddam was controlling one small department called the Peasants Department with Ahmed Bakr the Iraqi President. Later, with Bakr's support, Saddam's power quickly grew until he won power in the revolution of 1979.

[crazy280]

Exactly why I said "arguable". We also supplied his army with the weapons they needed in the '80s. Personally, I can't say we were responsible for his actions though.