Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ended his time as a fugitive in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse in Ad-Dawr, close to his birthplace of Tikrit. American forces found him there on the 13th of December 2003. When he appeared on video, he wore a full beard and his hair was longer than the world had ever seen it. For 35 years he had dominated Iraqi politics, and he had been the subject of a cult of personality. In custody, his guards gave him a nickname. They called him "Vic", short for "Very Important Criminal", and they let him plant a small garden near his cell.
The contrast is hard to ignore. How does a boy whose father died before he was born become the man whose face and name filled a nation? Why did governments that once armed and funded him later send armies against him? And why do so many Arabs remember a defiant leader while so many Iraqis, particularly Shias and Kurds, remember a tyrant? The answers begin in a small village, with a child nobody seemed to want.
In the village of al-Awja, near Tikrit, a boy was born on the 28th of April 1937 into a Sunni Arab family. His full name was Saddam Hussein Al-Majid Al-Tikriti, and the family belonged to the Al-Bejat clan of the Bedouin Al-Bu Nasir tribe. His first name means "the fighter who stands steadfast". His father, Hussein Abd al-Majid, had already died.
His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussalat, was so depressed by the loss that she tried, without success, to end her pregnancy and her own life. Afterward she wanted nothing to do with her son, and an uncle took him in. Later he returned to a stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, who treated him harshly. A CIA psychological profile says the man beat him regularly, sometimes just to wake him.
At around the age of 10, Saddam ran away to Baghdad. There he lived with another uncle, Khairallah Talfah, who became a fatherly figure. Talfah was a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran of the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War against Britain. He reportedly spent five years in prison for it and loved telling the boy about his exploits. Talfah's daughter would later become Saddam's wife.
Under his uncle's guidance, Saddam attended a nationalistic high school. He then spent three years at an Iraqi law school. In 1957, aged 20, he dropped out to join the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, which his uncle supported. The party was tiny. In 1955 it had fewer than 300 members in Iraq. Historians think family ties to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and other Ba'athist leaders mattered more than ideology in his choice.
The example of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser shaped young Ba'athists like him. Nasser had faced down Britain and France in the Suez Crisis of 1956, and monarchies were collapsing across the region. Saddam's own moment of action came in 1959, on a Baghdad street.
On the 7th of October 1959, Ba'athist gunmen planned an ambush on Al-Rashid Street. Their target was Abdul-Karim Qasim, the prime minister and de facto ruler. Qasim had refused to join Nasser's union of Egypt and Syria. He had adopted a policy of "Iraq First" and leaned on the Iraqi Communist Party, which opposed pan-Arabism. Saddam joined the plot late, after one of the would-be assassins dropped out. He was meant only to provide cover. Instead he began shooting too soon, and the operation fell into disorder. Qasim's chauffeur died. Qasim was hit in the arm and shoulder, and the attackers retreated believing him dead. He survived.
Some reports, citing former American officials, say the CIA and Egyptian intelligence worked together on the attempt. The relevant American records remain classified or heavily redacted. It is generally accepted that Egypt had some role.
The failure still made Saddam famous. The Ba'ath then had fewer than 1,000 members, and both the party and its young gunman had been obscure. Iraqi television later restaged the story endlessly, in the telling of the writer Kanan Makiya. In that version Saddam digs a bullet out of his own flesh, commandeers a car at gunpoint and trudges across the desert to Syria. He went to Syria first, then to Cairo in February 1960. He stayed in Egypt until 1963, finishing high school in 1961 and failing to complete a law degree at Cairo Law School. Some evidence suggests he had frequent contact with American officials there, though that evidence is contested. In February 1963, army officers with Ba'ath ties overthrew and killed Qasim, and Saddam's exile was about to end.
When the officers took power in the Ramadan Revolution of February 1963, Saddam was still in Cairo. Ba'athist leaders joined the cabinet, and Abdul Salam Arif became president. Because Saddam was abroad, he played no part in the coup or the brutal anti-communist purge that followed. Arif turned on the Ba'athists in November 1963, dismissing and arresting them.
Saddam came home and became a key organizer in the party's civilian wing. This time he did not flee to Syria. He began planning to assassinate Arif. He knew that, unlike under Qasim, he would not face a death penalty from Arif's government, and he accepted the risk of arrest. It came in October 1964. He served roughly two years in prison before escaping in 1966.
The escape opened a new chapter. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr appointed him Deputy Secretary of the Regional Command, and Saddam proved a gifted organizer who revitalized the party. In September 1966 he launched an extraordinary challenge to Syrian domination of the Ba'ath. This followed a Marxist takeover of the Syrian branch earlier that year. The result was a formal split of the party into two factions. Saddam then built a Ba'athist security service that he alone controlled.
In July 1968 he took part in a bloodless coup led by al-Bakr. It overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif, the brother and successor of Salam Arif. Saddam's actual role in the takeover was minor, except in the official account. His decisive act came afterward. The coup had depended on Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq an-Naif and his non-Ba'athist faction, and Saddam planned and carried out their purge. A semi-official biography claims he personally led Naif at gunpoint to the plane that flew him out of Iraq. Arif received refuge in London and then Istanbul.
Al-Bakr became president, and Saddam became his deputy and deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Biographers say he never forgot the tensions inside that first Ba'athist government, which pushed him toward enforcing party unity. Al-Bakr was older and more prestigious. Yet by 1969 Saddam had become the moving force of the party, working mostly behind the scenes. What he did with the state's money was the next question.
On the 1st of June 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of the international oil interests that dominated Iraq's oil sector. A year later, the 1973 energy crisis sent world oil prices soaring, and the new revenues funded his agenda. Roads, mining and new industries followed. Electricity reached nearly every city and many remote areas. Before the 1970s most Iraqis lived in the countryside, and about two-thirds were peasants. That share dropped quickly.
In the countryside, the government mechanized farming on a large scale, set up farm cooperatives and distributed land to peasant farmers. It doubled agricultural spending in 1974-75. Not everything worked. Saddam nationalized independent banks, and inflation and bad loans eventually left the banking system insolvent. Still, by the late 1970s the budget reserve passed US$35 billion. A single Iraqi dinar was worth more than 3 dollars. The government also invested in petrochemicals, fertilizer and textiles to reduce dependence on oil.
Schools received similar attention. Saddam controlled a national campaign to eradicate illiteracy and another for compulsory free education. Universal free schooling reached the highest levels, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis learned to read. Iraq built one of the most modern public-health systems in the Middle East, which earned Saddam an award from UNESCO. One hospital was set aside for children with cerebral palsy.
Women saw striking changes. Laws guaranteed equal pay, six months of fully paid maternity leave and protection against sexual harassment. In 1980 women received full suffrage and the right to run for office. They made up 46% of teachers, 29% of doctors, 46% of dentists and 70% of pharmacists. At one point in the 1980s they were 40% of the civil service. A 1985 report in The New York Times noted that 55 percent of enrollment at the University of Baghdad was female.
There was a political side to the spending. The Economist observed that Saddam's propaganda, which cast him as defender of Arabism against Zionist or Persian intruders, was heavy-handed but steady as a drumbeat. His secret police also put dozens of Arab news editors, writers and artists on the payroll.
Abroad, he wanted Iraq to lead the region. In 1972 he signed a 15-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union, and arms and several thousand advisers arrived. According to the historian Charles R. H. Tripp, this upset the American-sponsored security system of the Cold War. The United States covertly financed Kurdish rebels under Mustafa Barzani. The Kurds were defeated in 1975, and hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians were forcibly relocated.
The defeat came with a diplomatic deal. On the 6th of March 1975, Iran and Iraq signed the Algiers Agreement, mediated by Algeria's president, Houari Boumediene. Iran received sovereignty over the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and Iraq kept the western bank. The Shah withdrew his support for the Kurds.
Saddam's rare foreign trips included Madrid in December 1974, at the invitation of Francisco Franco. In September 1975 he met Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in Paris. In 1978 Baghdad hosted an Arab League summit that condemned Egypt for accepting the Camp David Accords. Back in Baghdad, al-Bakr's health was failing.
On the 22nd of July 1979, Saddam convened Ba'ath Party leaders and ordered that the meeting be videotaped. Six days earlier, on the 16th of July, he had forced the ailing al-Bakr to resign and had formally taken the presidency. The pressure to act came from Syria. Al-Bakr had begun treaty talks that pointed toward unity with the Ba'athist government in Damascus, with Hafez al-Assad as deputy leader. That would have pushed Saddam into obscurity. By then he had been a general since 1976 and the real strongman of the government.
At the assembly, Saddam claimed to have uncovered a fifth column inside the party. He directed Muhyi Abdul-Hussein, the party's secretary-general, to read out a confession and the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. As each name was called, the person was labelled disloyal and removed from the room into custody. When the list ended, Saddam congratulated the men still seated for their past and future loyalty.
All 68 were tried together and found guilty of treason. Twenty-two were sentenced to death. Other senior party members formed the firing squad. A second purge in June 1982 removed half of the sixteen Revolutionary Command Council members who had survived the first. Large numbers of Shias were pushed out, though some were later invited back to win support.
The machinery of control rested on a few institutions. From 1974 Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate, commanded the Popular Army, the party's paramilitary, which served as a counterweight to any coup by the regular armed forces. The Department of General Intelligence was the most feared arm of the state-security system, known for torture and assassination. Saddam's younger half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, commanded it. Foreign observers believed it hunted perceived opponents abroad from 1982.
Senior posts went mostly to Sunni Arabs, who made up about a fifth of the population. Key security jobs often went to close relatives, though loyal members of other minorities also held high rank. Two Shia movements, Dawa and SCIRI, wanted an Iranian-style theocracy, and Kurdish nationalists wanted independence. Saddam kept Ba'ath membership open to all citizens while using repression against opponents. Oil wealth built a patronage network for supporters.
Human Rights Watch estimated that the regime murdered or caused the disappearance of 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis. Analysts have called the government authoritarian and totalitarian, and some have called it fascist, though that label is disputed. Joseph Sassoon notes that it differed from Hitler's and Stalin's regimes in freedom of movement and freedom of religion.
Saddam also controlled the country's money. He and his inner circle moved sums, possibly several billion dollars, into foreign accounts through front companies and intermediaries. Early in his presidency he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a church in Detroit and received a key to the city. He also owned a trust fund called Montana Management, which held 2% of the Lagardère Group. Its holdings, including a $90 million stake, were frozen after 1990.
The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini lived in the Shia holy city of Najaf, in Iraq, from 1964. Saddam tolerated him until Khomeini began urging Iraqi Shias to overthrow the government. Under pressure from the Shah, Saddam expelled him to France in 1978. Within a year the Shah was gone, and Khomeini led an Islamic republic next door. Saddam feared that revolutionary ideas would spread among Iraq's Shia majority.
Tension built through 1979 and 1980. Iraq complained of at least 544 border incidents in 1980, and Iran cited at least 797 violations. On the 1st of April 1980, the Islamic Dawa Party tried to kill Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at the University of Baghdad. Iraq invaded Iran on the 22nd of September 1980, starting with airstrikes that included Tehran's Mehrabad Airport. The army then moved into the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, which has a sizable Arab minority. By the 5th of December 1980 it held more than 25,900 square kilometres of Iranian land.
The gains did not last. Iraqi troops suffered under human wave attacks, and on the 7th of June 1981 an Israeli air attack destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor. By 1982 Iraq was on the defensive. Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and against Kurdish separatists. Tariq Aziz later acknowledged this, while claiming Iran had used them first. Iran, demanding reparations, rejected ceasefire proposals. It accepted Resolution 598 only on the 20th of July 1988, citing poor morale and economic collapse, and fighting stopped by the 20th of August. Encyclopaedia Britannica estimates that perhaps 500,000 were killed on both sides. The borders were left nearly unchanged.
Iraq came out with an estimated US$120 billion in damage and around $90 billion in debt. About $40 billion was owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait alone. Most Iraqi Shias, who made up the bulk of the army, had chosen their country over Iran.
Saddam had powerful backers. The United States removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in February 1982. A former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Noel Koch, later said the real reason was to help Iraq against Iran. Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam in Baghdad on the 19th and the 20th of December 1983, and Tariq Aziz met Ronald Reagan in 1984. The Soviet Union first refused to supply Iraq but began sending aid by 1982. Along with France and China, it accounted for over 90% of the value of Iraq's arms imports.
The Anfal campaign ran from 1986 to 1989, peaking in 1988. Led by Ali Hassan al-Majid, it took its code name from the eighth chapter of the Qur'an. It targeted Kurdish rebels who had sided with Iran and the mostly Kurdish civilians in rural northern Iraq. Shabaks, Yazidis, Assyrians and Turkoman villages were also destroyed. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died and calls it genocide. Some Kurdish sources say 182,000.
On the 16th of March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was hit with mustard gas and nerve agents. Between 3,200 and 5,000 people died, and 7,000 to 10,000 more were injured. The U.S. State Department at first held Iran partly to blame. Joost Hiltermann's research of captured Iraqi secret police files indicates that Iraq carried out the attack and that American officials knew it. With the war over, Saddam needed money.
About $30 billion was the debt that Saddam asked Kuwait to forgive after the war with Iran, and Kuwait said no. He also pushed oil exporters to cut production to raise prices. Kuwait refused and led opposition inside OPEC. Iraq needed high prices to pay its debts, and Kuwait kept pumping. Saddam also argued that Kuwait had always belonged to Iraq and existed only because of British meddling. Kuwait, with 2 million people against Iraq's 25 million, held oil reserves roughly equal to Iraq's.
Washington sent mixed signals. The Reagan administration had given Iraq roughly $4 billion in agricultural credits, and Iraq became the third-largest recipient of American assistance. In April 1990 Saddam threatened to destroy half of Israel if it attacked. On the 25th of July 1990 he summoned the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie. She told him: "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait". Many took that as tacit approval.
Saddam invaded Kuwait on the 2nd of August 1990, first claiming to help "Kuwaiti revolutionaries". On the 28th of August Kuwait became Iraq's 19th Governorate. In interrogation he said an insult from the Kuwaiti emir, reported to him as a threat to turn "every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute", helped decide him. Asked why he invaded, he said: "When I get something into my head I act. That's just the way I am." Shortly before the attack, he shipped 100 new Mercedes cars to top editors in Egypt and Jordan. Two days earlier he reportedly offered Hosni Mubarak $50 million in cash.
A U.S.-led coalition began round-the-clock air and missile attacks on the 16th of January 1991. Iraqi missiles hit Israel, which did not retaliate, to keep Arab states in the coalition. A ground force ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February. Iraqi officers had looted Kuwait, even stripping marble from palaces to move to Saddam's own. Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner, and casualties were estimated at over 85,000. Iraq agreed to scrap its poison gas and germ weapons, with UN sanctions remaining until it complied. Saddam publicly claimed victory.
Uprisings by Kurds, Shias and dissident units broke out and were ruthlessly crushed. They cost an estimated 100,000 to 180,000 lives, mostly civilians. The United States had urged Iraqis to rise up and then did nothing to help. Saddam took his survival as proof that Iraq had won, which made him popular in much of the Arab world.
In 1993 he began the Faith Campaign under Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Some elements of Sharia law were introduced, and "Allahu Akbar", in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the flag. He commissioned a "Blood Quran", written with 27 litres of his own blood.
Sanctions hit hard. Iraq's GDP fell from US$44.36 billion in 1990 to US$9 billion by 1995. Iraq accepted the UN's Oil-for-Food Programme on the 9th of December 1996. By 2001, nearly all of its oil exports under that program were paid in euros. About 26 billion euros went into an escrow account in New York for 3.3 billion barrels. Iraq soon faced a new American president with a different list of grievances.
In his January 2002 State of the Union address, George W. Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil". He said Iraq had plotted to develop anthrax, nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. The coalition that invaded Iraq later, as the source puts it, incorrectly accused Saddam of developing weapons of mass destruction and of ties to al-Qaeda.
After UN Security Council Resolution 1441, Saddam let inspectors led by Hans Blix return. From November 2002 they searched and found no stockpiles. Blix described Iraqi cooperation as "proactive" but not always "immediate". On the 24th of February 2003, Saddam gave Dan Rather of CBS News an interview lasting more than three hours. He denied having banned weapons and asked for a live televised debate with Bush, which was declined. He later told an FBI interviewer that he had left open the possibility of such weapons to look strong against Iran.
The invasion began on the 20th of March 2003. Within three weeks the Iraqi government and military had collapsed. Baghdad fell on the 9th of April, symbolized by the toppling of his statue, and Saddam was nowhere to be found. He released audio tapes urging popular resistance. On the 22nd of July 2003, his sons Uday and Qusay and his 14-year-old grandson Mustafa died in a three-hour gunfight with U.S. forces in Mosul. Saddam called them "martyrs" on the radio.
After his capture, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer confirmed it the next day and showed the video. Those who spoke with Saddam in custody reported that he remained self-assured, describing himself as a "firm, but just leader". The British tabloid The Sun printed photographs of him in white briefs, washing his trousers and sleeping. The U.S. government said this violated the Geneva Convention. FBI agent George Piro interrogated him, and National Security Archive documents record those sessions.
The Iraqi High Tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging. He was executed on the 30th of December 2006.
Many Arabs saw him as a resolute leader who opposed American imperialism and Israeli occupation. Many Iraqis, especially Shias and Kurds, saw a tyrant. His wealth outlived him. In 2007 the Iraqi government asked France for help finding funds allegedly deposited in French financial institutions.
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Common questions
Where was Saddam Hussein born?
He was born on the 28th of April 1937 in al-Awja, a small village near Tikrit, into a Sunni Arab family. His father had died before his birth.
How did Saddam Hussein first become known in Iraq?
He took part in the failed 1959 attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Qasim. He began shooting too early, but the episode gave him and the Ba'ath Party widespread exposure.
When did Saddam Hussein become president of Iraq?
He formally took the presidency in July 1979, after forcing the ailing Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr to resign on the 16th of July. He had been vice president since 1968.
Why did Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990?
Saddam cited disputes over war debt, oil prices and his claim that Kuwait was historically part of Iraq. He also said an insult from the Kuwaiti emir helped decide him.
How did the Iran-Iraq War end?
Iran accepted UN Resolution 598 on the 20th of July 1988, and fighting stopped by the 20th of August. Borders were left nearly unchanged after perhaps 500,000 deaths, by one estimate.
What happened to Saddam Hussein after the 2003 invasion?
American forces captured him on the 13th of December 2003. The Iraqi High Tribunal convicted him of crimes against humanity, and he was hanged on the 30th of December 2006.
All sources
272 references cited across the entry
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- 157JournalSanctions on Iraq: A Valid Anti-American Grievance?Michael Rubin — December 2001
- 158JournalChanging views on child mortality and economic sanctions in Iraq: a history of lies, damned lies and statisticsTim Dyson et al. — 24 July 2017
- 159NewsSaddam Hussein said sanctions killed 500,000 children. That was 'a spectacular lie.'Liz Sly — 4 August 2017
- 160NewsNot My Job: Former CIA Officer Robert Baer Gets Quizzed On BearsNPR — 10 January 2015
- 161NewsThe CIA And the Coup That Wasn't16 May 2003
- 162Saddam Gives Defiant Speech - 2001-01-1728 October 2009
- 163JournalThe Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline.Abbas S. Mehdi — 22 June 2003
- 164NewsIraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euroFaisal Islam — 16 February 2003
- 166BookIsrael and Iran: A Dangerous RivalryDalia Dassa Kaye et al. — RAND Corporation — 2011
- 167BookTreacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United StatesTrita Parsi — Yale University Press — 2007
- 168The US-led war in Iraq and Saddam's Arab legacyArwa Ibrahim
- 169NewsSaddam in secret talks with IsraelJason Burke et al. — 21 May 2000
- 174Iraq pledges Palestinians billion euros from oil10 December 2000
- 176NewsSaddam calls for jihad against Israel25 December 2000
- 177BookMuslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present DangerRobert Wistrich — 2002
- 178NewsSaddam chokes off oil to put pressure on westEwen MacAskill et al. — 9 April 2002
- 179NewsFull text: State of the Union addressGeorge W. Bush — 30 January 2002
- 180SpeechState of the UnionGeorge W. Bush — 29 January 2002
- 181NewsCNN Transcript of Blix's remarksCNN — 27 January 2003
- 182UN news briefingUnited Nations — 7 March 2003
- 183NewsBehind The Scenes With SaddamCBS News — 24 February 2003
- 184NewsFBI says Saddam's weapons bluff aimed at Iran2 July 2009
- 185Timeline of events: 20 years since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq17 March 2023
- 186NewsVideo shows Saddam's 'final public appearance'Sydney Morning Herald staff — 19 April 2003
- 187NewsThe last moments of Saddam's grandsonJulian Borger et al. — 24 July 2003
- 188NewsDead: the sons of SaddamJulian Borger et al. — 23 July 2003
- 190Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI: Twenty Interviews and Five Conversations with "High Value Detainee # 1" in 2004National Security Archive — 1 July 2009
- 191NewsSaddam 'caught like a rat' in a holeCNN — 14 December 2003
- 192NewsSaddam Hussein, Defiant Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence and Fear, DiesNeil MacFarquhar — 30 December 2006
- 193Saddam underwear photo angers USBBC — 20 May 2005
- 194NewsPentagon vows to probe Saddam photosRoger Clark et al. — CNN — 21 May 2005
- 195NewsInterrogator Shares Saddam's ConfessionsScott Pelley — CBS News — 27 January 2008
- 196NewsTour of prison reveals the last days of Saddam HusseinCNN — 27 March 2008
- 197Judging DujailHuman Rights Watch — 19 November 2006
- 198NewsSaddam Formally ChargedSoftpedia — 15 May 2006
- 199NewsJudge Closes Trial During Saddam TestimonyFox News — 15 March 2006
- 200NewsIraq court upholds Saddam death sentenceMariam Karouny et al. — 26 December 2006
- 201NewsSaddam Hussein executed in Iraq30 December 2006
- 202News'I Want a Firing Squad'Sky News — 5 November 2006
- 203NewsFrame by frame: last moments of a tyrantNed Temko et al. — 31 December 2006
- 204NewsSaddam Execution Images Shown on TV, WebDavid Bauder — 2 January 2007
- 205NewsSaddam Hussein's body was stabbed in the back, says guardDeborah Haynes — 1 November 2008
- 207NewsSaddam's final words30 December 2006
- 208How Saddam died on the gallows1 January 2007
- 209NewsNew Video of Saddam's Corpse on InternetQassum Abdul-Zahra — 9 January 2007
- 210NewsTribal chief: Saddam buried in native village30 December 2006
- 211NewsIraq conflict: Saddam's tomb destroyed in Tikrit fightingBBC — 16 March 2015
- 212NewsSaddam's allies moved his corpse, fearful Shi'ite militias would harm it: tribal leaderAhmed Rasheed — 6 August 2014
- 213NewsMarriages of Saddam HusseinSheri & Bob Stritof — About.com — 1 January 2004
- 214Hussein's wife, daughter on new 'wanted' listCNN — 2 July 2006
- 215Saddam's family on Iraq wanted list30 September 2007
- 216Iraq frees Saddam Hussein's son-in-law after 18 years in prisonAli Jawad — 19 June 2021
- 221رغد صدام حسين ترد على حقيقة وجود أخ غير معلن عنه لها20 February 2021
- 222NewsSaddam's billionsMichael Harvey — 2 January 2007
- 223NewsSaddam's daughters express love for dad1 August 2003
- 224Remembering Saddam's Birthday: April 28, 2001Lisa Margonelli — 28 April 2010
- 226Why Hero Worship Of Saddam Hussein Is Stronger Than Ever In JordanHassan Zayed — 2025-01-19
- 228Saddam Hussein Given Keys to Detroit, 19809 October 2021
- 23011 Crazy Facts About Saddam HusseinWe Are The Mighty — 12 July 2022
- 232NewsIraq: The Rise And Fall Of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's 'Great Uncle'Kathleen Moore — 9 April 2008
- 233Saddam Hussein's medals displayed in South Africa22 January 2007
- 235Saddam medals on display in Jo'burg16 January 2007
- 237BookSaddam's Word: Political discourse in IraqOfra Bengio — Oxford University Press — 1998
- 238Orit Bashkin. The other Iraq: pluralism and culture in Hashemite Iraq. Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. 174.
- 239BookBlood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to DarfurBen Kiernan — Yale University Press — 2007-01-01
- 240Inside the Abandoned Babylon That Saddam Hussein BuiltPesha Magid — 2 December 2019
- 241Conflicted S3 E17: Saddam vs. Ayatollah7 September 2022
- 242NewsNo surprise in Iraqi vote17 October 1995
- 243NewsIraq – July 22 – Saddam Plans Referendum2002
- 244NewsSaddam 'wins 100% of vote'BBC — 16 October 2002
- 245Saddam Hussein's Iraq13 September 1999
- 248BookState of Repression: Iraq under Saddam HusseinLisa Blaydes — Princeton University Press — 2018
- 249BookCruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab WorldKanan Makiya — W. W. Norton & Company — 1993
- 250HUSSEIN DOESN`T DENY `BUTCHER OF BAGHDAD` NICKNAME1990-08-03
- 251Saddam Hussein: 1937 – 20062006-12-30
- 254The long shadow of Saddam's dictatorship in IraqAlfadhel Ahmad et al.
- 255NewsState of Repression: Iraq Under Saddam HusseinJohn Waterbury — 16 October 2018
- 256The Gulf War11 May 2020
- 257JournalThe wars of Saddam HusseinAbbas Kelidar — 1 October 1992
- 259Why sanctions fell short of their objectives in the First Gulf War5 January 2023
- 260BookOverreach: Delusions of Regime Change in IraqMichael MacDonald — Harvard University Press — 2014
- 261NewsTrump praises Saddam Hussein's efficient killing of 'terrorists,' calls today's Iraq 'Harvard for terrorism'Jeremy Diamond — 6 July 2016
- 262NewsGaddafi's 'spiritual son': the general blamed over flood catastropheMatthew Campbell — 16 September 2023
- 263NewsKhalifa Haftar will use Libya's floods to deepen his control21 September 2023
- 264NewsLibya floods: Elseddik and Saddam Haftar, the brothers vying for power after disasterRayhan Uddin — 19 September 2023
- 265Barry Keoghan to Star in Film From 'Chernobyl' Director Johan Renck About Saddam Hussein's Final Days (Exclusive)Scott Roxborough — 15 February 2024
- 266BookThe Trial of Saddam HusseinAbdul-Haq Al-Ani — Clarity Press — 2008
- 267BookThe Iran-Iraq War: New International PerspectivesRoutledge — 2013
- 268BookSaddam Hussein: A BiographyShiva Balaghi — Greenwich Press — 2008
- 269BookSaddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003: Ba'thi Iraq from Secularism to FaithAmatzia Baram — Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press — 2014
- 270BookA History of the Iraq Crisis: France, the United States, and Iraq 1991–2003Frédéric Bozo — Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Columbia University Press — 2016
- 271JournalCheater's Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to WarMålfrid Braut-Hegghammer — Summer 2020
- 272BookThe Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's TotalitarianismAaron M. Faust — University of Texas Press — 2015
- 273BookSaddam Hussein: A Political BiographyEfraim Karsh et al. — Grove Press — 2002
- 274BookThe Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam HusseinSandra MacKey — W. W. Norton & Company — 2003
- 275BookRepublic of Fear: The Politics of Modern IraqKanan Makiya — University of California Press — 1998
- 276BookThe Iran–Iraq War: A Military and Strategic HistoryWilliamson Murray et al. — Cambridge University Press — 2014
- 277BookEnemy of the State: The Trial and Execution of Saddam HusseinMichael A. Newton et al. — St. Martin's Press — 2008
- 278BookSaddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian RegimeJoseph Sassoon — Cambridge University Press — 2011