In the country of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a very influential and powerful person. He and his actions are the main reasons that the United States went to war against Iraq. Saddam was born into a poor family in northern Iraq April 28, 1937. Only 6 months before he was born, his father ran off. Soon thereafter, his brother died of cancer, at the young age of 13. Saddam was sent to live with his mother’s brother for the first three years of his life.He attended high school and started college, but he dropped out to join the Ba’ath party, which is a political party in Iraq. In 1959 he was part of an attempt to kill the prime minister of Iraq. He then fled the country and went to Egypt where he continued studying law. The political party which he still belonged to, the Ba’aths took power in 1963, so he came back and continued studying law in Baghdad.This short reign by the Ba’aths was ended the same year at began as they were overthrown. Saddam was thrown in jail, but he eventually broke out. He then became one of the important leaders of the Ba’ath party. He played a very important part in them coming back into power in 1968, with a man with the last name of Bakr as their president.He resigned in 1979 which is when Saddam took over and continued his reign of terror until 2006. Early while he was their president (more like dictator), he attempted to take over all of Iran’s oil fields, but that attempt became unsuccessful when the two countries ended up going to war. This war lasted until 1988 when the countries ended up signing a cease-fire.Even though the country of Iraq was in major debt, especially after that war that had lasted for a number of years, Saddam continued to assemble his armed forces. Only a short two years after the war had ended in Iran, Hussein ordered his forces to invade Kuwait. He thought that he would take their oil resources in Kuwait and it would help stimulate Iraq’s economy.After he invaded Kuwait there was a trade embargo against Iraq which would obviously hurt his country’s economy more than help it, so his plan wouldn’t really have been working at that point in time. It was at this time that the UN and United States made it clear to Saddam that he needed to remove his troops from Kuwait or there would be forces used to make him remove his troops.The UN/United States forces were successful in driving them out of Kuwait, and as a result of that, Iraq had a cease-fire agreement with the UN. As a result of this, Iraq was not allowed to possess or have anything to do with nuclear weapons. They would not fully cooperate for a while and this made Great Britain and the U.S. very upset.After 9/11, the United States invaded Iraq and the war that’s still going on today began. We made it very clear one of our goals was to kill him, but he did flee for a long time. We eventually found him in an underground barn near his hometown where we captured him. He eventually stood trial where he was found guilty of crimes against humanity. They then sentenced Saddam to death by hanging along with his half brother from his mother’s remarriage who was an intelligence officer, and also Iraq’s former chief judge. This sentence was carried out December 30, 2006 when Saddam Hussein breathed his last breath as he was hung to death.
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