Line #24 UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein


1	[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Saddam_Hussein_7839.jpg]]
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3	->''"Three whom God should not have created: Persians, Jews, and flies."''
4	-->-- '''Hussein family proverb'''
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6	Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth president of UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}}, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Leading member of the Ba'ath Party, a revolutionary group that espouses a mix of UsefulNotes/{{Arab\|World}} socialism and Arab nationalism. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, [[UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} 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.
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8	Over the next three decades, Saddam would proceed to modernize the Iraqi economy, build one of the most robust welfare and education systems in the entire Middle East, 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 since UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler to commit genocide using poison gas), as well as locking Iraq under a horrific era of immense repression, extrajudicial killings and persistent human rights violations. 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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10	To this day, the debate still continues on how good or bad it was to remove him from power. While nobody saw him as a good man, the chaos that ensued after his removal in Iraq (and continues to this very day) had many believe that he was the LesserOfTwoEvils.
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12	It is common for [[UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem conservative U.S. politicians]], both when he was alive and long after his execution, to mispronounce "Saddam" as if it was a homophone of "Sodom" (it is not).
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14	Perhaps most interesting when it comes this very wiki, Hussein was also a writer of literature. His novels, of which the first two are ostensibly ''romance'' novels, are believed to have been written with at least some help from ghostwriters, and were published in the latter part of his time as dictator of Iraq under the pseudonym "He Who Wrote It", a traditional way in Arabic writing to preserve anonymity. The novels are noted to bear all the hallmarks of an amateur writer [[ProtectionFromEditors operating without an editor]], especially having a tendency to halt the plot often to have the characters or the narrator deliver rambling and sometimes aimless {{Author Filibuster}}s about Hussein's views on world society, history, politics, and proper governance, and of course, the occasional conspiracy theory about his enemies, both real and imagined. The following four novels are widely believed by, amongst others, the CIA to be written by Hussein. Should you ever manage to get hold of a copy, make sure to add tropes:
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16	* ''Zabibah and the King'' (2000)
17	* ''The Fortified Castle'' (2001)
18	* ''Men and the City'' (2002)
19	* ''Begone, Demons!'' (2004)
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21	A notable detail to add to this is that Saddam was also a fan of literature to the point that he was infamous for writing a religious scripture with his blood in his belief of devotion. In fact, this was the foundation of one of his very few policies as a dictator that people have argued succeeded by most standards. During his time as Ba'ath Party vice-chairman from 1968 to 1979, Saddam was appalled to discover that illiteracy was a widespread problem amongst the Iraqi people, and so he instituted a draconian countrywide literacy program, where failure to attend mandatory reading classes became punishable by three years in jail. As a result, Iraq became the country with the highest percentage of literacy in the region, and this number has actually first started to decline with the recent instability in the country.
22	----
23	!!Appears in the following works:
24	* He is the BigBad of Jeffrey Archer's 1993 novel ''Honour Among Thieves'', where he enacts a plan to steal and publicly destroy the American Declaration of Independence. He has some intimidating presence, but he doesn't speak often nor even appear that much.
25	* Appears in the Creator/FrederickForsyth novel ''The Fist of God'', which deals with Iraq's weapons program during the First Gulf War.
26	* A recurring villain in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' who usually tries to take over Canada. He is also Satan's abusive gay boyfriend. A (possibly apocryphal) story says that when the real Saddam was captured by U.S. forces, [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment they played him]] TheMovie, ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut'' (where he was essentially the BigBad) in his cell.
27	* Appears (via edited stock footage) in the first-season ''Series/{{JAG}}'' episode "Scimitar".
28	* ''ComicStrip/{{Nero}}'':
29	** In "De Bibberballon" Nero and Adhemar fly over Iraq in their rocket ship. Nero asks Adhemar to fly close to Saddam, as he "wants to take a good look at him." When they do he drops a fridge box on Saddam's head.
30	** In "De Gouden Hemelkijker" Nero has to fulfill three tasks, one of them kicking Saddam in the butt, for which he and his son Adhemar fly all the way over to Iraq to do so.
31	* An over-the-top caricature of Saddam is the main villain in ''Film/HotShotsPartDeux'', [[UnexplainedRecovery even though an air strike killed him]] at the end of [[Film/HotShots the previous movie]].
32	* He is the VillainProtagonist of the 2008 biographical miniseries ''Series/HouseOfSaddam''.
33	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
34	** Bart and Lisa beat him up in "Treehouse of Horror X".
35	** Krusty's girlfriend had to kill him in Iraq during ''Desert Storm'' in "Insane Clown Poppy", but Krusty prevented this from happening, because "he's half of my stand-up comedy act".
36	** In "The Ziff Who Came To Dinner" while investigating a noise in the attic, Homer finds an old copy of ''Newsweek'' with a cover story titled "Why America Loves Saddam Hussein".
37	* He's a supporting character in ''Film/TheDevilsDouble'', which centers on his AxCrazy oldest son Uday's body double.
38	* Appears in the ''VideoGame/Action52'' game ''Storm Over the Desert'' in which his name is changed to "Satan Hosain", dies in one hit, and gives extra lives when being driven over.
39	* The musical dream sequence in ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' features Saddam as the attendant at a bowling alley.
40	* He is featured as a combatant in an episode of the third season of ''Series/DeadliestWarrior'', where he is pitted against Pol Pot.
41	* The third season of ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' features several of Hussein's body doubles who have been out of work since their boss was captured.
42	* French {{puppet show\|s}} ''Series/LesGuignolsDeLInfo'' portrayed him as a resolute, jaded and {{beleaguered\|boss}} president/warchief who couldn't do anything to modernize his forces or stop the Americans during the 2003 invasion and was friends with terrorist UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden and Mullah Omar.

Context UsefulNotes / SaddamHussein