Saddam Hussein, a notorious and ruthless dictator, seized power in Iraq in 1979, plunging his nation into a perpetual state of war. His brutal regime was responsible for the deaths of at least one million people, as he relentlessly pursued his destructive ambitions. In 2003, his regime was toppled by the U.S. invasion, and he met a fitting end on the gallows, his life terminated by a hangman's noose.
In 1980, Saddam embarked on a catastrophic war with neighboring Iran, which lasted for seven years and eleven months, making it the longest conventional war of the 20th century. His motivations were twofold: to settle border disputes and crush his own Shi'ite Muslim population, who were predominantly Iranian. The war ended in a stalemate, with approximately 500,000 Iraqi and 400,000 Iranian casualties, resulting in economic losses of half-a-trillion dollars. Saddam's use of poison gas against Iranian troops was an atrocity unmatched even by Adolf Hitler's brutal tactics during World War II.
Between 1986 and 1989, Saddam launched a deliberate campaign of genocide against the Kurds in northern Iraq, targeting not only Kurds but also Assyrians and Jews. In 1988, his forces unleashed a poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing as many as 5,000 people and injuring 10,000. This three-year-long campaign of terror claimed the lives of up to 182,000 people.
In 1990, Saddam's thirst for conquest led him to invade Kuwait, intending to plunder and annex the oil-rich nation. An international coalition, led by President George H.W. Bush, liberated Kuwait, but left Saddam in power. His son, President George W. Bush, assembled a second coalition army, dominated by American and British forces, which invaded Iraq in March 2003 to depose the dictator.
The invasion was justified on the grounds that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and was collaborating with al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States. However, both claims were proven false, and Saddam was captured in December 2003. He was subsequently tried and executed by the Iraqi interim government for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in 1982. His death sentence was carried out on December 30, 2006.
