Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!

Iraq is a great nation now, as it has been at times throughout history. Nations generally "go to the top" only once. Iraq, however, has been there many times, before and after Islam. Iraq is the only nation like this in the world. This "gift" was given to the Iraqi people by God. When Iraqi people fall, they rise again.

Saddām Hussein `Abd al-Majid al-Tikrītī (Hussein also spelled Husayn and Hussain; Arabic: صدام حسين عبدالمجيد التكريتي; (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. After being put on trial for crimes against humanity, he was sentenced to death, and was executed by hanging.

Quotes

• Traditionally Marxism attracts the oppressed. This, however, is not the case in the Arab nation... The socialist programs in Arab history did not always come from the poor, but from men who had known no oppression and became the leaders of the poor. The Arab nation has never been as class-conscious as other nations.
  • n.d., quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• The ideal revolutionary command should effectively direct all planning and implementation. It must not allow the growth of any other rival center of power. There must be one command pooling and directing the subsequent governmental departments, including the armed forces.
  • Baghdad Domestic Service, March 20, 1971, quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• Our children should be taught to beware of everything foreign and not to disclose any state or party secrets to foreigners... for foreigners are eyes for their countries, and some of them are counterrevolutionary instruments [in the hands of imperialism].
  • al-Dimuqratiyya Masdar Quwwa li al-Fard wa al-Mujtama, 1977, quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• The most important thing about marriage is that the man must not let the woman feel downtrodden simply because she is a woman and he is a man.
  • Interview with the Al-Mar'a magazine in 1978, quoted in Price of Honor (2002) by Jane Goodwin.
• In Nomine Jesu
• I know that there are scores of people plotting to kill me, and this is not difficult to understand. After all, did we not seize power by plotting against our predecessors? However, I am far cleverer than they are. I know they are conspiring to kill me long before they actually start planning to do it. This enables me to get them before they have the faintest chance of striking at me.
  • Summer 1979, quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.
  • "Women: One Half of Our Society" (1981).

• You Americans, you treat the Third World in the way an Iraqi peasant treats his new bride. Three days of honeymoon, and then it's off to the fields
  • Meeting with US State Department officials (1985), as quoted in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Gulf War (2002) by Charles Jaco, p. 23.

• The ruling family in Kuwait is good at blackmail, exploitation, and destruction of their opponents. They had perpetuated a grave U.S. conspiracy against us.... stabbing Iraq in the back with a poisoned dagger.
  • Radio Baghdad, July 1990, quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun.… The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins!
  • Broadcast on Baghdad state radio, January 17, 1991.
  • Comment on the beginning of Desert Storm, quoted in Washington Post (17 January 1991) "Iraqi Leader Remains Defiant Following US-Led Air Attacks" by Nora Boustany

• Palestine is Arab and must be liberated from the river to the sea and all the Zionists who emigrated to the land of Palestine must leave.
  • On Iraqi Television, May 30, 2001; quoted in Robert Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger(2002), page 43.

• The United States reaps the thorns that its leaders have planted in the world. These thorns have not only caused the feet and hearts of certain people to bleed, but also caused the eyes of the people to bleed - those people who wept a lot over their dead.... This was the case in Japan, which was the first to suffer from the capabilities of nuclear destruction on which the United States prides itself. This also includes what it did in Vietnam and Iraq and wha it did against the Russian nuclear submarine... The United States has become a burden on all of us. It threatens our security and that of the world on a daily basis... Why do you drive the world to this point, and why do you stab the world with a dagger?
  • Baghdad Television, September 12 2001, quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

• Isn't the use by America and some Western governments of their fire against others in the world including, or in the forefront of whom are the Arabs and the Muslims, one of the most important reasons of the lack of stability in the world at the present time? Isn't the evil inflicted on America in the act of September 11, 2001, and nothing else, a result of this and other acts? This is the main question and this is what the American administration along with of the Western governments or the Western public opinion should answer in the first place with serenity and responsibility, without emotional reaction and without the use of the same old methods that America used against the world.
  • Open letter to the American peoples (15 September 2001).

• Iraq is a great nation now, as it has been at times throughout history. Nations generally "go to the top" only once. Iraq, however, has been there many times, before and after Islam. Iraq is the only nation like this in the world. This "gift" was given to the Iraqi people by God. When Iraqi people fall, they rise again.
  • Interview with FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279.

• The lion does not care about a monkey laughing at him from a tree.
  • Saddam Hussein, Defiant Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence and Fear, Dies (The New York Times, 30 December 2006, page A10)
  • In response to guffaws from a spectator in an overhead gallery during his trial, 2006.

• Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!
  • Death Penalty for Saddam Hussein (BBC News online)
  • Reaction on being sentenced to death, November 5, 2006.

• I call on you not to hate, because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.
  • Saddam Hussein Farewell Letter (MSNBC online)
  • Statement in a farewell letter written to the Iraqi people, written Nov. 5, 2006, released Dec. 27, 2006.

• la ilaha il-Allah, wa Muhammadu... (There is no god but God and Muhammed [is His prophet])
  • Last words.

Attributed

• Hussein stated it is not only important what people say or think about him now but what they think in the future, 500 or 1000 years from now. The most important thing, however, is what God thinks. If God believes something, He will convince the people to agree. If God does not agree, it does not matter what the people think.
  • Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 .

• SSA Piro asked Hussein why Iraq was the only country to applaud the 9/11 attack, which Hussein immediately denied.… Hussein stated that he wrote editorials against the attack, but also spoke of the cause which led men to commit these acts. The cause was never reviewed which could create such hatred to kill innocent people.
  • Conversation with FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (28 June 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 .

• President Saddam, he always think about America, "They are foolish. They don't understand anything in this world. They never travel. They don't know anything outside the area. Just they believe what the president says. They are the dictatorship, not us." And about George Bush, the father, he always called him stupid.
  • Latif Yahia, double for Uday Saddam Hussein, in I knew… Saddam (31 July 2007) Al Jazeera English

About Saddam Hussein

I call on you not to hate, because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.

• The Chilcot inquiry’s conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and undermined the United Nations requires the prosecution of Tony Blair, the high court has heard. Michael Mansfield QC (Queen's Counsel)... summarised the report’s findings as: “Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the UK, intelligence reporting about [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that the war was unnecessary and that the UK undermined the authority of the UN security council....Nothing could be more emphatic than these findings,” he said. “It was an unlawful war.”
  • Owen Bowcott, Tony Blair should be prosecuted over Iraq war, high court hears, The Guardian (5 Jul 2017)

• We're dealing with Hitler revisited, a totalitarianism and a brutality that is naked and unprecedented in modern times, and that must not stand!
  • George H. W. Bush (23 October 1990), quoted in The Bush Dyslexicon (2002) by Mark Crispin Miller.

• I despised Saddam Hussein, because he attacked Iran when my hostages were being held. It was President Reagan who established diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein after I left office.
  • Jimmy Carter (10 September 2007), interview with Democracy Now!, .

• Vous êtes mon ami personnel. Vous êtes assuré de mon estime, de ma considération et de mon affection.
  • Translation: You are my personal friend. Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration and bond.
  • French president Jacques Chirac in a declaration on September 5, 1974.
  • Source: Aeschimann, Éric & Boltanski, Christophe (2006). Chirac d'Arabie : Les mirages d'une politique française (in French), Grasset & Fasquelle, pp. 64, ISBN 2246691214.

• Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem].
  • George Galloway, The Times, January 20, 1994, citing BBC monitoring service at 9 PM on January 19 as its source.

• It's not as if anyone is worried that through some horrible miscalculation we could be removing the Iraqi Abraham Lincoln by mistake.
  • Ann Coulter, How to Talk to a Liberal if You Must 2004.

• Should Saddam be considered a condottiere, once in the pay of the U.S. government and then rebellious against his former masters? When war constitutes the global order and when the generals become the highest magistrates, we cannot but expect such developments.
  • Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 48. ISBN 1594200246.

• Stunningly, as bad as things were under Saddam—and we have to keep in mind this perspective of Saddam in the wake of a brutal eight-year war with Iran and then the genocidal sanctions for 13 years, from 1991 up until the beginning of this invasion in March 2003—as bad as it was under Saddam, with the repression and the detentions and the torture and the killings, the overall feeling of Iraqis today, in Baghdad and other places in Iraq where I went this trip, was that things are much worse now. There’s less—far less security. You don’t really know where you can go and what you can do and know that you’re going to have any kind of safety. “Any time that we send our kids out to school now,” is what I was told, “we don’t know for sure on any given day that they’re going to come back.” And so, the prevailing sentiment is that, yes, it was good initially to have Saddam removed, but people are still concerned with basic things like security, an economy stable enough to be able to have a job to work, to have food and provide something for your family. And these things just no longer exist today in Iraq. So the prevailing sentiment is that it’s far worse now even than it was under Saddam Hussein.
  • Dahr Jamail, as quoted in Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq with Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers (March 20, 2013), Democracy Now!.

• The US has not committed atrocities in Iraq that are even remotely comparable to what Saddam did.
  • Kanan Makiya, "Kanan Makiya speaks about Iraq 5 years later...", Washington Post (March 20, 2008)

• On August 2, 1990, the very day when President Bush announced a plan to focus defense planning on regional conflicts, the Iraqi mechanized divisions of Saddam Hussein plunged across the border of Kuwait and in six days eliminated conventional military resistance against an outnumbered and uneven Kuwaiti defense force. On August 8, with his crack Republican Guard divisions closing in on the border of Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi dictator declared the "lost province" of Kuwait annexed to Iraq. Saddam Hussein condemned the Kuwaiti ruling family, the al-Sabahs, for mistreating foreign workers and supporting Iraqi dissidents; however, for Saddam the invasion represented primarily a financial coup de main that would place Kuwaiti oil in Iraqi hands. It was a desperate attempt to increase the oil revenues he needed to pay his war debts, rebuild his army and air force, pacify his Sunni Muslim supporters, pursue his grandiose plans to build nuclear and chemical strategic weapons, and replace the now-lost largesse from the Soviet Union and the anti-Iranian Western nations.
  • Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States From 1607 to 2012 (2012), p. 593-594

• Taking his own counsel, which he admitted rested on his religious convictions and intuition, George W. Bush decided after becoming president that he would rid the world of Saddam Hussein, which already had congressional sanction in 1998. Bush made several public statements about his mission to remove "evil" tyrants and destroy governments that sponsored terrorists. Bush's instincts took more stimulus from Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives in the national security system. Even before 9/11 the White House had investigated what a global war on terrorism might entail. For a president impatient with the complexities of foreign policy, the national security analyses provided little comfort. No other government (not even Israel's) had much stomach for redefining the continuing struggle against terrorism as a war upon a particular state, including Iraq. Even after the shock of 9/11 and the start of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, the Bush administration found little international support in making Iraq Target Number One for international action. Instead, the consensus, communicated by the State Department and the CIA, was that Saddam Hussein's days were numbered and that his ability to attack his neighbors had been largely, if not completely, destroyed. Saddam was "contained." The president did not accept these assurances.
  • Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States From 1607 to 2012 (2012), p. 651

• As the Bush administration prepared for war, Saddam Hussein retreated further and further into his own fantasy world. He believed that the United States would not attack because Americans lacked the will to take casualties. His forces could and would kill so many Americans that any Desert Storm II offensive would stall well short of Baghdad, He allowed no one in his inner circle to question his delusions. He also believed that France and Russia, his allies, would deter the United States from displacing him because that was in their economic interests. He planned to save his oil wells and air forces for another postwar rebirth. The WMD threat may have been real to Saddam Hussein and other true believers like his sons, but the missiles, warheads, and deadly chemicals were scattered, hidden, forgotten, and never existed, although few Iraqis outside Chemical Ali's circle knew it. The Iraqi high command was so stacked with loyalists that the generals could easily assume someone else's part of the armed forces had real capability. Information-sharing was an invitation to disgrace and death.
  • Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States From 1607 to 2012 (2012), p. 653-654

• I managed to get to him the message that he will be executed, finally telling him that, "You are the last card to be played by Bush and Blair." He said, "I am the last card?" I said, "Yes, you are the last card, because Bush and Blair have no reasons to invade Iraq. All the claims were against Iraq — nuclear, link with al-Qaeda — all these stuff has actually disappeared, proved that they don't exist. But they have you. You are they one who they will claim, 'We have removed the dictator.' Do you think removed dictator will be for life sentence or for releasing?" He said, "I understand."
  • Najib al-Nuaimi, Saddam's attorney before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, in I knew… Saddam (31 July 2007) Al Jazeera English

• The PR strategy worked; by the fall of 2002, a majority of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and at least 66 percent believed (falsely) that the Iraqi leader had been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Support for an invasion of Iraq — and Bush's approval rating — hovered around 60 percent. With an eye on the midterm elections, Republicans stepped up the attacks and pushed for a vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate's fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.
  • Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Page 293.

• Saddam gave us a lot of things. The development of the country ... but I think what he took away from us in the meantime, was our very souls. We got into a stage where we were fearing each other, where husbands and wives didn't talk to each other, where parents were afraid to express anything in front of their kids because the teachers often asked the kids, 'what does daddy think of uncle Saddam? What does your mummy think of uncle Saddam?.' And there are horror stories of parents being executed because of the child.
  • Zainab Salbi, about Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as quoted in the documentary I Knew Saddam (2007) by Al Jazeera English.

• As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist: He is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man.
  • Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. Gulf War briefing (28 February 1991), as quoted in "WAR IN THE GULF: Commander's Briefing; Excerpts From Schwarzkopf News Conference on Gulf War" in The New York Times.

• Donald Trump's praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds. In reality, Hussein's regime was a sponsor of terrorism – one that paid families of suicide bombers who attacked Israelis, among other crimes. Trump's cavalier compliments for brutal dictators, and the twisted lessons he seems to have learned from their history, again demonstrate how dangerous he would be as commander-in-chief and how unworthy he is of the office he seeks.
  • Jake Sullivan, as quoted in "Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein for killing terrorists ‘so good’", The Washington Post (July 5, 2016)

• Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Right? He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights -- they didn't talk, they were a terrorist, it was over.
  • Donald Trump, as quoted in "Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein for killing terrorists ‘so good’", The Washington Post (July 5, 2016)

• I noticed how the History Channel is now portraying Saddam as the new Hitler. That's what's going to be set down in our history books—that George Bush and the American government saved the world from this Hitler wannabe? Sure, he did some terrible things, but this is ludicrous. Hussein gassed the Kurds, but where did he get the gas from? He got it from us. But no, let's not tell the truth and reveal that, at one time, Saddam was one of our biggest allies in the Middle East, and shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld.
  • Jesse Ventura, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), chapter 14, p. 265.

• The images of Saddam Hussein endlessly repeated on our screens before the war (Saddam firing a rifle into the air) made him into some kind of Iraqi Charlton Heston — the president not only of Iraq, but also of the Iraqi Rifle Association. The true interest of these images, however, is that they remind us how the ideological struggle is fought out not only at the level of arguments but also at the level of images: which image will hegemonize a field, and function as the paradigmatic embodiment of an idea, a regime, a problem.
  • Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 2. ISBN 1844675408.

QC (Queen's Counsel)... summarised the report’s findings...Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the UK, intelligence reporting about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty... the war was unnecessary

See also

• Execution of Saddam Hussein
• Abd al-Karim Qasim
• Abdul Rahman Arif

External links

• International reaction on Saddam Hussein Death
• News24.com: "Saddam in the dock: Key quotes"
• BBC News | Middle East | Farce And Gravity At Saddam Trial