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Saddam Hussein and Iraq
The war with Iran left Iraq with great debts. Saddam needed funds to maintain his army, which he used to control Iraq. In 1990, he decided to invade Kuwait, a tiny nation about 1/25th the size of Iraq, but with almost as much oil. A multinational military force led by the United States responded to the invasion and liberated Kuwait in January 1991. Saddam allowed weapons inspectors into his nation as a condition
of the cease-fire. The inspectors insured that he was not building weapons
of mass destruction. In |
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Iraq
was once known as Babylon. Like Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar, Iraq is
led by a dictator who has fought bloody wars with his neighbors. Saddam
Hussein has been the sole ruler of Iraq since 1979. A year later, he began
a bloody war with Iran. Iraq wanted to seize control of the oil rich land
in Iran. The two sides fought for nine years, and as many as one million
people died, but neither nation gained in the war.
1998,
Saddam accused the inspectors of spying and ordered them out of the country.
The United States and Great Britain responded with four days of bomb attacks
in December 1998. Five years later, a multinational force led by the United
States invaded Iraq and captured Saddam. The former dictator is being
held in an Iraqi prison by a provisional Iraqi government an is on trial for his accused crimes.