biography
| name: |
Hussein, Saddam
|
| |
also spelled Sadam Husain
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pronunciation:
[husayn]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1937– )
|
| biography:
| President of Iraq (1979– ), born in Takrit, NC Iraq. He joined the Arab Baath Socialist Party in 1957, and was sentenced to death in 1959 for the attempted assassination of President Kassem, but escaped to Egypt. He played a prominent part in the 1968 revolution, became vice-president of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council (1969), and sole president in 1979. His disastrous attack on Iran in 1980 led to a war of attrition which ended in 1988, during which he quelled a Kurdish uprising by the widespread use of chemical weapons. He invaded Kuwait in 1990, but was forced to withdraw when he was defeated by a coalition of Arab and Western forces in Operation Desert Storm (1991). Iraq has since suffered international isolation and economic sanctions. His breaching of the peace terms led to further military strikes during the next decade, but he continued to resist UN and US pressure for a programme of weapons inspection within Iraq. World opinion was divided in 2002 following President Bush's threat of war as part of a renewed campaign to remove him from office. UN weapons experts resumed inspections, 2002–3, but Iraq's apparent failure to comply with UN resolutions to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction led to a US-led military invasion in March 2003. |
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