History UsefulNotes / SaddamHussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth president of Iraq, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Leading member of the Ba'ath Party, a revolutionary group that espouses a mix of Arab socialism and Arab nationalism. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, and nomad versus peasant. When Saddam came to power, he worked on fixing it and modernizing Iraq. Unfortunately, he was a believer in the UsefulNotes/JosefStalin School of Fixing and Modernizing Backward Countries: being as brutal as possible.

* An over-the-top caricature of Saddam is the main villain in ''Film/HotShotsPartDeux''.

** Krusty's girlfriend had to kill him in Iraq during ''Desert Storm'' in the episode "Insane Clown Poppy", but Krusty prevented this from happening, because ''he's half of my stand-up comedy act''.

Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy and grant more rights to women, but also order brutal persecution against ethnic minorities, particularly against the Kurds, who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons during events such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign Al-Anfal campaign]] (making him the first dictator after UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler to have committed genocide using poison gas), as well as locking Iraq under a horrific era of immense repression. Also famous for launching the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, which resulted in over a million deaths due to Hussein's ambitions to take over Iran, and the 1991 UsefulNotes/GulfWar, where Iraq basically fought half the world. He was executed in 2006 by the new Iraqi government following a [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US]] and [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] invasion of Iraq.

Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy and grant more rights to women, but also order brutal persecution against ethnic minorities, particularly against the Kurds, who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons during events such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign Al-Anfal campaign]] (making him the first dictator after UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler to have committed genocide using poison gas). Also famous for launching the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, which resulted in over a million deaths due to Hussein's ambitions to take over Iran, and the 1991 UsefulNotes/GulfWar, where Iraq basically fought half the world. He was executed in 2006 by the new Iraqi government following a [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US]] and [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] invasion of Iraq.

'''Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti''' (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth president of Iraq, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Leading member of the Ba'ath Party, a revolutionary group that espouses a mix of Arab socialism and Arab nationalism. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, and nomad versus peasant. When Saddam came to power, he worked on fixing it and modernizing Iraq. Unfortunately, he was a believer in the UsefulNotes/JosefStalin School of Fixing and Modernizing Backward Countries: being as brutal as possible.

%%!!Tropes as depicted in fiction:

* A recurring villain in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' who usually tries to take over Canada. He has a gay abusive relationship with Satan.

* An over-the-top caricature of Saddam is the main villain in HotShotsPartDuex.

Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy and grant more rights to women, but also order brutal persecution against ethnic minorities, particularly against the Kurds, who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons during events such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign Al-Anfal campaign]] (making him the first dictator after AdolfHitler to have committed genocide using poison gas). Also famous for launching the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, which resulted in over a million deaths due to Hussein's ambitions to take over Iran, and the 1991 UsefulNotes/GulfWar, where Iraq basically fought half the world. He was executed in 2006 by the new Iraqi government following a [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US]] and [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] invasion of Iraq.

'''Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti''' (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth president of Iraq, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Leading member of the Ba'ath Party, a revolutionary group that espouses a mix of Arab socialism and Arab nationalism. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, and nomad versus peasant. When Saddam came to power, he worked on fixing it and modernizing Iraq. Unfortunately, he was believer in the UsefulNotes/JosefStalin School of Fixing and Modernizing Backward Countries: being as brutal as possible.

->Three whom God should not have created: Persians, Jews, and flies.

Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy and grant more rights to women, but also order brutal persecution against ethnic minorities, particularly against the Kurds, who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons during events such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign Al-Anfal campaign]]. Also famous for launching the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, which resulted in over a million deaths due to Hussein's ambitions to take over Iran, and the 1991 UsefulNotes/GulfWar, where Iraq basically fought half the world. He was executed in 2006 by the new Iraqi government following a [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US]] and [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] invasion of Iraq.

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* He is the BigBad of Creator/JeffreyArcher's 1993 novel ''Literature/HonourAmongThieves'', where he enacts a plan to steal and publicly destroy the American Declaration of Independence. He has some intimidating presence and doesn't speak often, but he doesn't appear that much.

-->-- Hussein family proverb


Fifth president of Iraq, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Leading member of the Ba'ath Party, a revolutionary group that espouses a mix of Arab socialism and Arab nationalism. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, and nomad versus peasant. When Saddam came to power, he worked on fixing it and modernizing Iraq. Unfortunately, he was believer in the UsefulNotes/JosefStalin School of Fixing and Modernizing Backward Countries: being as brutal as possible.

!!Tropes that apply to him

* ArchEnemy: Iran hates him for starting a war on their soil, Kurds hate him for the genocidal Anfal campaign, UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush fought a brief war to drive him out of Kuwait, and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush drove him out of power in Iraq.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Averted. When he was captured, the soldiers who captured him noted that he ''did'' have a pistol, but didn't try to use it.
* BadassMustache: Minus the badass for he himself that is.
* BatmanGambit: Launching Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, hoping to incite an armed response from the Israelis to drive a wedge between the Coalition forces, many of whom were Arab states not entirely friendly towards Israel to begin with.
* BlingBlingBang: He had a personal collection of gold plated guns.
* BodyDouble: He was infamous for this; according to some sources, he had over ''fifty'' body doubles that he used on various occasions.
* TheButcher: See NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast.
* ColdBloodedTorture: The things that went on at Abu Ghraib during his rule are probably better left unsaid.
* {{Conscription}}: Under his rule, the Iraqi Army was mostly made of conscripts. While this made his army the sixth largest in the world, it was actually to his detriment: these conscripts had extremely poor morale, and they would often either [[ShellShockedVeteran go insane]] or surrender. Famously, one platoon of soldiers surrendered to ''journalists'' during the 2003 invasion.
* CurbStompBattle: He got handed two: the UsefulNotes/GulfWar and the 2003 invasion.
* DeadlyGas: His army employed mustard gas to deadly effect during the Iran-Iraq War and the Al-Anfal campaign. In the latter, anywhere from 180,000 to 200,000 civilians were killed. During the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War, the US-backed Coalition indicated that any such use of chemical weapons against their own forces would be responded to with a nuclear reprisal. Obviously, [[GodzillaThreshold neither side crossed that threshold]] during the war.
* DefiantToTheEnd: According to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein#Proceedings this account]].
* DisappearedDad: His dad disappeared before he was born.
* TheDreaded: He was so amazingly feared that during his trial, when he wandered in all disheveled and malnourished, the jury still reeled in horror.
* EliteMooks: His Republican Guard units, while they were better trained and equipped (not to mention better paid) and more loyal than his army of conscripts, were still no match for the forces of NATO and the Arab League during the 1991 Gulf War.
* EnemyMine: The Gulf War saw several states with not-so-great relations coming together because they hated Saddam more than they hated each other. This included Israel and the United States cooperating with the Soviet Union and Syria.
** And before that, the Iran-Iraq War had Saddam receiving support and aid from the US and NATO. Even though the Western nations acknowledged the fact that he was a brutal dictator, he was then still seen as a lesser evil than the much more hated Iran[[note]]The war began in 1980, fresh off the heels of the Iranian Revolution and still in the midst of the American embassy hostage crisis.[[/note]]
* FamousLastWords: "[[UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} I swear there is no god but God]] [[KilledMidSentence and Muhammad...]]"
** That sentence also happens to be one that must be uttered for someone to convert into Islam, or for someone to enforce their faith. Unsurprisingly, this also tends to be the last words of many other Muslims around the world.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: He went from the son of shepherds and a law school dropout to a brutal and genocidal dictator, responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
* GasMaskMooks: Due to his tendency to use chemical weapons against his enemies and his own population, many of his soldiers wore gas masks.
* TheGeneralissimo: One of the best examples.
* GovernmentConspiracy: In addition to the normal tinpot dictatorship stuff, he was also a very close ally of France- so close that he funded and blackmailed several French political candidates that were pro-Iraq. It goes a long way toward explaining why they supported him so much in the 70s and 80s.
* HopelessWar: He thought that invading and conquering Iran would be a child's play. Cue to 8 years of war and 150-375,000 dead Iraqis without any territorial gains. Then he utterly fooled Iraq into thinking that it could defeat half of the world on its own in the UsefulNotes/GulfWar and the 2003 invasion.
* {{Irony}}: The now famous image of him and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands during the Iran-Iraq War.
** For a guy who hated Western imperialism, his invasions of Iran and Kuwait were very imperialistic. Not only that, but he took huge amounts of aid from France and other NATO countries while doing it.
*** Isn't it more ironic that NATO supported him to begin with?
* ItsAllAboutMe: He had giant posters of himself plastered all over Baghdad.
* KangarooCourt: Presided over several of these, taking his cue from JosefStalin. He perceived his trial like this while being tried for crimes against humanity.
-->'''Saddam''': If you are Iraqi, you know who I am... and you know that I do not tire. I am the president of Iraq and I refuse to answer these questions because this court is illegitimate.
* KilledMidSentence: Before he could recite the second half of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahada Shahada]], the Islamic creed.
* KissingCousins: His first wife, Sajida Talfah, was also his first cousin.
* MeaningfulName: "Saddam" roughly means "He who causes collisions" in Arabic.
* ModernMajorGeneral: He utterly failed in the Iran-Iraq War and the UsefulNotes/GulfWar.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: He was nicknamed "The Butcher of Baghdad". His cousin and defense minister, Ali Hassan al-Majid, also had his own nickname among the Iraqi Kurds: "Chemical Ali."
* OlderThanTheyThink: Saddam wasn't the first to invent the phrase of "mother of all x", but is probably the most famous in recent time ("mother of all battles").
* OverlordJr: Uday Hussein is something of a subversion. Uday's own [[AxCrazy antics]] were [[EvenEvilHasStandards so severe]] that Saddam [[IHaveNoSon all but disowned him]] and handed much of his power to his other son, Qusay.
* PetTheDog: He was a brutal authoritarian, responsible for genocide, mass torture, ''two'' invasions, crimes against humanity (but not the 9/11 attacks), and possessed a general lack of competency. His hatred of the American government was well-publicized, especially after the UsefulNotes/GulfWar, but that didn't stop him from [[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/22/iraq.afghanistan personally sending an email to an American citizen offering his condolences after the 9/11 attacks]]. He may have hated Washington, but he did not hate the American people.
* PropagandaMachine: Taken to absurd levels with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf]] (AKA Baghdad Bob/Comical Ali), who at one point claimed that the American soldiers were committing suicide ''en masse''...[[EpicFail while American tanks could be seen in the background]].
* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: He did this a lot when he was President. He also tried this as a defense in his trial, with less success.
-->'''Saddam''': I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have the constitutional rights according to the constitution, including immunity from prosecution.
* TheWarOnTerror: Not involved in it much himself, but was the leader of Iraq at the time of its invasion, and his overthrow was tied to it.
* WeHaveReserves: This was his plan during the Gulf War; he thought that he could throw his troops in by the tens of thousands to slowly bleed the coalition until they saw the war as just not worth it. It didn't work, mostly because his troops were not very devoted and the enemy had much better technology.
-->'''Saddam''': We are ready to sacrifice our souls, our children and our families so as not to give up Iraq. We say this so no one will think that America is capable of breaking the will of the Iraqis with its weapons.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: It's often debated whether the messy US war in Iraq throughout the 2000s could have been avoided if UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush had chosen to overthrow Hussein at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. However, that would not only have been outside the mandate of the coalition (which was only supposed to liberate Kuwait and destroy the Iraqi army) but also several of those involved in the war, including Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell, have said in retrospect that what happened after the 2003 invasion is exactly what they feared might happen if they invaded in 1991.

!!Saddam Hussein in fiction:

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* BadassMustache

* KarmicDeath

* OverlordJr: Uday Hussein
** Something of a subversion. Uday's own [[AxCrazy antics]] were [[EvenEvilHasStandards so severe]] that Saddam [[IHaveNoSon all but disowned him]] and handed much of his power to his other son, Qusay.

* VillainousValour

* AxCrazy

* A recurring villain in WesternAnimation/SouthPark who usually tries to take over Canada.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E4TreehouseOfHorrorX Treehouse of Horror X]]'' Bart and Lisa - as Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl - beat up Saddam in a montage sequence.

* He is the BigBad of Jeffrey Archer's 1993 novel ''Literature/HonourAmongThieves'', where he enacts a plan to steal and publicly destroy the American Declaration of Independence. He has some intimidating presence and doesn't speak often, but he doesn't appear that much.

* A reccuring villain in WesternAnimation/SouthPark who usually tries to take over Canada.

* A reccuring villain in Main/SouthPark who usually tries to take over Canada.

Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy and grant more rights to women, but also order brutal persecution against ethnic minorities, particularly against the Kurds, who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons during events such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign Al-Anfal campaign]]. Also famous for launching the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, which resulted in over a million deaths due to Hussein's ambitions to take over Iran, and the 1991 UsefulNotes/GulfWar, where Iraq basically fought half the world. He was executed in 2006 by the new Iraqi government following a [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks US]] and [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British]] invasion of Iraq, although his country is actually ''worse off'' than when they had their dictator.

* ArchEnemy: Iran hates him for starting a war on their soil, Kurds hate him for the genocidal Anfal campaign, UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush fought a brief war to drive him out of Kuwait, and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush drove him out of Iraq.

* ArchEnemy: Iran hates him for starting a war on their soil, Kurds hate him for the genocidal Anfal campaign, UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush fought a brief war with him over the oil in Kuwait, and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush staked his legacy on driving Saddam out of Iraq (although it's pretty much universally agreed that the war was a horrific blunder).

-->-—Hussein family proverb

* Appears in the FrederickForsyth novel ''The Fist of God'', which deals with Iraq's weapons program during the First Gulf War.

* TheCaligula