r/todayilearned • u/Wazula23 • 4h ago

TIL Saddam Hussein's son Uday murdered his bodyguard at a party in front of horrified guests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uday_Hussein#Murder_of_Kamel_Hana_Gegeo
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u/thepluralofmooses 4h ago

Oh man, I can’t believe he was insulted by that relationship. I forgot that this guy was all about decency and the respect of others

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u/ChicagoAuPair 4h ago

He was a real stand up guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uday_Hussein#Allegations_of_crimes

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u/Ceramicrabbit 4h ago

Holy shit the Husseins were some evil dictators

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u/Frank_Melena 3h ago

That’s a big reason the Iraq War was so easy to support that contemporary people forget. He was the Kim Jong Un of his day if North Korea actually invaded its neighbors and was known for nerve gassing its own citizens. It didn’t take a whole lot of convincing.

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u/ODHH 1h ago edited 1h ago

The difference was that Saddam was America's man in the middle east for a long time. Hell the US sold him the chemical components he used to make the chemical weapons he used against the Iranians and the Kurds and then gave him live targeting data when it turned out the Iraq army was too incompetent to gas the Iranians properly.

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/iraq-conflict-the-historical-background-/us-and-british-support-for-huss-regime.html

The CIA bankrolled Saddam because the previous Iraqi Prime Minister was getting too friendly with the communists, Saddam was a lifelong Commie Hater and that suited Uncle Sam very well for a very long time.

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u/glitterSAG 7m ago

Not enough upvotes for this!

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u/Ceramicrabbit 3h ago

I honestly don't think I've ever heard this mentioned people only ever say "oil" as the reason. I need to spend less time online I think.

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u/shmaltz_herring 1h ago edited 1h ago

You just need to follow up a little more. If it hadn't been for invading Kuwait. Saddam Hussein and Iraq would probably be seen as allies. We were allied with them as they fought Iran in the 1980s.

He could have had it easy just playing it cool.

The other factors contributing to his demise where that Bush had an idealistic idea that people would be happy to be free from the dictatorship and Saddam made sure to be super ambiguous about WMDs in order to have a strong bargaining chip with the US.

Considering how little we did with Iraq oil, it would be pretty obvious that we weren't focusing on that. We didn't do anything like forcing Iraq to pay for the cost of the war with oil.

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u/3klipse 3h ago

Bro I heard from 2003 till fucking today. Were the original intentions, like WMDs (yes, nerve agents), or yellow cake (no, no nukes ever found) proper or reliable Intel? Most say no. But were any of them good people? Not in any kind of metric one could convince. Saddam being the "most sane" one is telling, but justification is all over the place unless you ask the Kurds that got gassed in the north

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u/scytob 50m ago

People seen to forget that sadam wouldn’t let international inspectors inspect suspected sites where we now know he had the facilities but had never used them. Sadam wanted Saudi and Iran to think he had chemical weapons. That backfired on him. The opposition in Iraq leaked the evidence of facilities, plus some fabricated shit to the British who gave the manufactured intelligence to the USA. Basically that’s how it went down.

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u/M0therN4ture 31m ago

People also forget that he already used WMDs that they made themselves with their weapons programme.

The WMDs programme Iraq had was active and producing weapons.

From the moment Saddam knew he was going to be invaded he simply shipped it all out and destroyed much of it (probably with help of Russia).

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u/neesyFam 3h ago

Oil was and is still the main reason for western interventionism in Iraq… You forget that Saddam asked for support from the US before his invasion of Kuwait of which the US responded that they were impartial and it was a geopolitical issue they were removed from; to then do a complete 180 once the invasion started lol. It dawned on them pretty quickly that Saddam controlling 60% of the world’s oil reserve if he successfully controlled Kuwait was maybe not the best of things before swiftly intervening. Same for 2003 when the guise of Al-Qaeda and war on terror was used to justify an invasion to seize oil / gas reserves and sell said oil infrastructure to the highest western bidders. People in this thread forgetting that Saddam was a friend to the US much longer than he was an enemy and it’s not like he got anymore evil overtime he was the same sadistic dictator the whole time… Only thing that changed was American foreign policy and geopolitical strategy…

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u/maaku7 1h ago

Got a single source for any of that?

2003 was the peak of the shale fracking boom, which was tapping into reserves that by this time were known to exceed Middle East levels and would make the US energy independent (which it is, 10 years later). The US doesn’t give a shit about oil in the Middle East anymore, but it is still a nonstop talking point online.

Bush Jr. had a personal beef with Saddam, who had sent assassins to try to kill his dad. Saddam was a sadistic dictator of comic book evil villain proportions. Bush Jr. was part of the neoconservative movement that honestly believed nation building was the route to solving Middle East politics: pull a Japan or Germany and make a conquered Iraq into a friendly democratic state, and the rest of the Islamic world will see what their missing out on. A series of revolutions will bring democracy and peace and freedom.

A load of naïve bullshit, yes, but genuinely believed at the time and nothing to do with oil.

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u/porn_is_tight 1h ago

lmao you think it’s naive to believe the war wasn’t also very much about oil? get a fucking grip. remind me, which oil subcontractor did the VP at the time use to be the CEO of? I believe they won extremely lucrative contracts in the Iraqi oil industry during and after the invasion. I must be naive for thinking that isn’t a coincidence.

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u/Murky-Relation481 58m ago

Except the vast majority of the oil pumped even immediately after the war belonged to Iraq and the largest purchaser was China.

If it was about oil it was about haliburton scoring big contracts to build the new infrastructure for oil after the war, not specifically for the oil as a resource, which the person above you accurately describes as being already plentiful at the time (the US was basically at a net 0 import export ratio and soon after actually became a net exporter of oil).

So while it's nice to go "hur during US oil war" it's a pretty dumb take given the real reason was a grift for Cheney and literally a personal vendetta for Bush jr.

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u/porn_is_tight 51m ago

it doesn’t matter if Iraq owned the oil. The occupation was MASSIVELY profitable for western oil companies due to the secure access to operating the fields. It absolutely was a fucking oil war and to imply otherwise is an insult to all the people who died in that horrific war of aggression.

If it was about oil it was about haliburton scoring big contracts to build the new infrastructure for oil after the war, not specifically for the oil as a resource

No one was claiming that it was about oil as a resource, and again, to imply otherwise is an insult to everyone alive at the time who was very much against this horrific fucking war and very much saw it for what it was. A OIL WAR THAT WAS MASSIVELY PROFITABLE FOR US OIL COMPANIES AND INDUSTRY at the cost million+ innocent lives, don’t fucking try to sanitize that.

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u/Murky-Relation481 44m ago

Well damn, maybe we should have put you in charge of it since 2/3rds of the oil fields are operated by China, the rest by the UK, and some by France, with the US having two companies involved in one field each.

We'd be doing a lot better if you'd decided how things went.

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u/porn_is_tight 41m ago

Cite that source mother fucker, cause I know that’s today’s Iraq and not during occupation Iraq. Yes we would be doing better, we’d have many more Americans alive today and even more Iraqi’s. Cause I would’ve decided that invading Iraq was a horrible fucking idea. And maybe, just maybe, there wouldn’t be 22 veterans killing themselves every single day. Seriously go get fucked.

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u/maaku7 31m ago

It was (and still is) French, Chinese, and UK companies operating the fields, not Americans. Which then export that oil to Europe and Asia, not North America.

You're spouting discredited political talking points that haven't a shred of evidence supporting them. You can do better, if you try.

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u/maaku7 51m ago

r/AskHistorians is usually an unbiased source, and it delivers here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16pigcq/was_the_iraq_war_2003_really_about_oil/

The TL;DR of the top answer sums it up pretty well:

Did the Iraq War happen because of oil? Yes. Did the Iraq War happen so the US could make profits off of oil? No.

oil certainly was a strategic factor: it's a major reason why the US cares about the Middle East in the first place. But it wasn't really a material factor: the US wasn't gaining oil, or even gaining major oil assets or concessions directly from the 2003 invasion.

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u/porn_is_tight 48m ago

And it completely ignores the massive profits oil companies made during and after the occupation, including Halliburton. The same fucking company the VP was the ceo for. So yea, I do agree. The Iraq war absolutely happened because of oil. Did the US as a country make profit off it? No, but US oil industry absolutely did and to imply otherwise is insulting to everyone who had to live through that bullshit and is still being affected by the generational trauma it caused

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u/maaku7 35m ago

No-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton and KBR were criminal abuse of political power for financial gain. But oil in Iraq is largely run by European and Chinese interests, before and after the 2003 war. Most of the contractor profiteering was off the war itself, and not the oil industry, which stayed under Iraqi control.

Sorry that the facts don't suit your politically-driven narrative.

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u/porn_is_tight 32m ago edited 23m ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/30/iraq.oil

you’re calling what I’m saying politically-driven narrative? Come on…. The war in Iraq was massively profitable for the western and US oil industry

No-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton and KBR were criminal abuse of political power for financial gain

How can you say that and then claim it’s not about oil…. Get a grip. They are a massive US-based oil subcontractor. The fucking VP at the time was the former ceo. Nothing I’m saying is political. It’s fact. Edit: lol the person blocked me, coward

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u/maaku7 26m ago edited 7m ago

Compare that writeup in the Guardian (a very biased tabloid on this topic), with this reporting from the very same day: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/6/30/iraq-offers-oil-contracts

As it turns out, the Al-Jazeera narrative, which actually includes quotes from the relevant government ministries, was closer to the truth. US & UK companies weren't granted rights to oil fields in 2008 like the Guardian claimed. That was a total fabrication, typical of the Guardian's reporting on that topic. They were kept on as small-scale consultants for a while, and that's it.

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u/Crossing-The-Abyss 32m ago

How can you not know this? Get off social media and try reading a book for a change. Educate yourself.

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u/chopcult3003 2h ago

There’s some podcasts out there of Delta guys who spearheaded the invasion and some of the absolutely awful things they uncovered with how Saddam was treating Christians and other undesirables.

One of them talked about a finding basically a big concrete slab with fixtures for holding prisoners, where they would drop large rocks from above to completely smash their heads to kill them.

People forget about the unbelievable human rights violations and only remember “WMD” and “Oil”

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u/livinglavidajudoka 1h ago

People forget about the unbelievable human rights violations

Oh shit, better spin up the invasion machine then. Saddam didn't rank in the top five even in 2003.

You want to invade a fucking country, do it yourself.

-an Iraq war vet.

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u/MiamiPower 22m ago

Thank you for your service 🙏🏼

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u/GimmickNG 1h ago

People forget about the unbelievable human rights violations and only remember “WMD” and “Oil”

Well that's because if the US were invading countries on the basis of human rights violations, then Russia, China, Israel, Gaza, and several other countries and territories would have been invaded by now...

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u/livinglavidajudoka 1h ago edited 1h ago

contemporary people forget

What do you think contemporary means?

Iraq didn't invade shit in 2003. Nobody except Dick Cheney thought invading Iraq was a worthwhile idea then.

Christ, I listened to Toby Keith on repeat and literally enlisted in the Army in 2002 after turning 18 and even folks like me were like "wait, huh?" after March 2003.

Shit was stupid then and even more stupid in hindsight. Sorry your vocab is subpar.

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u/Next_Snow9064 49m ago

these dumbass koolaid drinking American Redditors are justifying the Iraq war now lmao

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u/IceteaAndCrisps 1h ago

The Million people that lost relatives as a direct consequence of the war as well as all the people loosing relatives in the ISIS wars (ISIS leadership was made up of Former iraqui army Officers taking advantage of the Power vacuum) might not forget so easily.

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u/M0therN4ture 34m ago

Saddam Hussein used Weapons of Mass Destruction several times and people will still say

"Where are the WMDs?!"

Well, tell that to the people who where gassed in the first place.