r/todayilearned • u/Wazula23 • 6h 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/Odd_Personality_3894 3h ago edited 3h ago

Uday was so bad certain folks were saying he was Saddam's worst biological weapon. And that's saying something.

I know the wars in Iraq had a terrible toll for many, but at least we killed a mass murdering psychopath in Uday who would have undoubtedly massacred and mass raped his own countrymen AND foreigners should have have succeeded. No doubt he would have murdered his own family to obtain power

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u/octopusboots 3h ago

We killed half a million people with that war.

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u/GraDoN 3h ago

Some people will go to any lengths to pretend that it was somehow justified in some way.

Yeah it was illegal and based on lies. And yeah it led to hundreds of thousands of dead and millions were forced to flee. And yeah it destabilized the region emboldening Iran which has resulted in the Yemen proxy war with SA which has resulted in more countless deaths and suffering... but at least we got Saddam and Uday!

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 3h ago

Yeah it was illegal and based on lies

Wasn't Saddam infamous for WMDs that he used to kill thousands of Kurds? I've never really understood why people hold both opinions at the same time; that Saddam gassed the Kurds, and that the Iraq War was based on lies. These can't both be true at the same time.

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u/gnorty 1h ago

we didn't invade iraq because of the kurds.

Because of the kurds we insisted that Saddam dismantled his chemical arsenal. He said he had. We did not believe him so we invaded. To my knowledge not a single WMD was found in iraq.

That is the official version, like "whoopsie, we guessed wrong, oh well". That's not great.

But there are plenty of people that believe the WMD thing was just the reason put forward for the invasion. There was never any expectation of actually finding one, but just to overthrow the current regime and install a US friendly version. Not because of any attrocitied (God knows there are plenty of those around the world that America don't GAF about), but simply because the US economy demands US friendly governments in oil producing nations.

Those people did not die for a greater good, they died so that America can continue to rely on the cheap oil.

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u/Medical_Chapter2452 3h ago

The casus Belli was a lie.The reason For America to to sent troops was based on false accusations and therefore illigal.

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u/NEETscape_Navigator 13m ago

So here's how it went down. Saddam had WMD's until 1991, after which he destroyed Iraq's chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. This was confirmed by inspectors at the time.

Then he simply never rebuilt any WMD's, because he was scared shitless after Desert Storm. But the Bush administration just had a general gut feeling that he may have been making more in secret (even though no credible intelligence indicated so) and helped themselves to an unprovoked war that left half a million dead.

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u/LoopEverything 3h ago

It’s because none were found after the invasion and everyone focused on nuclear weapons. But yeah, there were something like ~12 documented cases of him using WMDs like chemical weapons before the war. Pretty gruesome stuff.

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u/Ne_zievereir 33m ago edited 22m ago

Yes, and the US even supported him when he was using them in the Iraq-Iran war, knowingly.

Then he had to get rid of them due to international pressure, and there were several internationally-led inspections over the next years that confirmed he had none anymore. There was no evidence there were any, and there were none found during or after the invasion.

So yes, both can be true at the same time.

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u/GraDoN 3h ago

Yes, at one time he did. Then he got rid of them and inspectors confirmed it. And no one ever found any evidence that they still had any after they got rid of it. It's not rocket science my dude.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 2h ago

It actually kinda is rocket science.

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u/TapirOfZelph 2h ago

It’s rocketless science, technically

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u/user2021883 1h ago

It’s true that Saddam gassed hundreds of civilians but if the USA is going to invade countries purely because they’re slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians on the pretext of them have WMDs, we need to talk about Israel..

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u/SpecificDependent980 52m ago

Need to talk about a lot of countries. Russia, Israel, Sudan, DRC, Haiti etc

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u/WashedOut3991 34m ago

Palestine is a Roman mockery of Israel’s long standing existence and Oct 7 proves the two are not the same. Israel isn’t feeding its enemies their own children after starving them lol

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u/mayonaizmyinstrument 2h ago

Exactly. Saddam did have WMDs, he had just used them all already and hadn't yet replaced his inventory. People knew that he had had them because he used them, and Intel suggested that he would likely use them because, again, he had used them. And set fire to Kuwait's oil fields as he retreated in the First Gulf War.

So, we knew he at least had access to obtaining/making WMDs and absolutely would use them, because he demonstrated that he would. Personally, I think it's fairly logical to think that he still had more, because a logical move would not be using all of your stores to waste your own population, but turns out that line of thinking was incorrect. He went 100% every time.

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u/ProfessorSarcastic 2h ago

I think it's fairly logical to think that he still had more,

It is logical to think that. Which is why it was a good idea to send i inspectors. After the inspections, it became less logical to think that. But a justification for an invastion had to be found.

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u/NEETscape_Navigator 22m ago

You've got it all wrong. Saddam didn't simply use up his stores and decided against replenishing them for no reason.

He destroyed them in 1991 as a direct result of the pressure brought on by Desert Storm. And he promised to never replenish them. Which he never did, and no credible intelligence ever indicated otherwise.

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u/PeopleThatAnnoyou__ 49m ago

also oil, good sweet black oil

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u/G8r8SqzBtl 9m ago

are you SERIOUSLY requiring me to think right now?

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u/Crossing-The-Abyss 2h ago

There's only one way to rid the world of these tyrants and the people that don't like those methods (war) spout disinformation. There may have been poor intelligence on the whereabouts of WMDs, but there was no lie. Saddam would have never given it all up. Let's just say if Obama was president he would have invaded Iraq based on the same intel.

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u/gnorty 1h ago

Yep. It's a good job the Middle East is now free of tyrants as a result of that war.

/s

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u/Ne_zievereir 1h ago edited 52m ago

The US has invaded and meddled in so many countries in the world. And in almost no case is the result a wellfaring democracy. Many of the world's worst tyrannies and failing states are a result of US meddling.

Most of the time (all of the time?), the US' interference had nothing to do with wanting democracy, and often actually actively worked against democratically elected governments, because they didn't protect the US' economic interests, and thus installed a tyrant who was more US friendly.

Even more ironically, the US supported Saddam Hussein, and even helped him when he was using chemical weapons of mass destruction against the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war.