Iraq

Tomorrow, Sunday 5th, the first verdict in the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will be announced. Although it is not legal to pre-judge the outcome of a trial, it is deemed likely that Saddam will be found guilty, and will be sentenced to death.

Although his regime was toppled 3½ years ago, his overthrow has brought little stability to Iraq; if anything, the removal of this potentate has uncorked the bottle containing the evil genii. Put in less flowery words, the presence in the country of US, British and other Western forces has been seized upon to marshall a massive insurgency, which seems to be succeeding in steering the country towards civil war.

It is my considered opinion, that this is a case of severely botched US foreign policy (sorry guys), spanning three decades. In the years between 1980 and 1988, Iraq and Iran were at war. Iraq was sponsored by the then US government to stop the Islamic extremists which had just come to power in Tehran. The genocidal tendencies of Saddam Hussein were covered over as he was useful. To quote (perhaps out of context) one senior military man in Washington: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch".

After the Iran / Iraq war ended inconclusive in 1988, Saddam Hussein thought he would get away with anything, so he set his sights on Kuwait, claimed as Iraq's 19th province.
The country was invaded in 1990. This upset the Americans, for reasons of control of oil reserves. And the fact that the Emir of Kuwait was a better friend than Saddam Hussein. After a very brief conflict, the Iraqis were bombed out of Kuwait in March 1991, and their army was in such disarray that the road to Baghdad lay open. The then president George Bush Snr was pursuaded by Arab leaders not to take out Saddam Hussein.
He should have.

Over a period of more than a decade, a cat-and-mouse game was played over allegations of NBC weapons in Iraq. NBC is Nuclear, Biological and Chemical. It was very likely that Iraq at one time did have some nasty things, but: its nuclear facility was bombed by the Israelis in 1981. And by 2003, there was no firm evidence to other non-conventional armaments. On top of that, Saddam Hussein was in a military stranglehold.

In spite of that, president George W. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and effect a regime change. He also brought up the war on terror as a reason, although there was no evidence that there was a link between Al-Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein.

Iraq was invaded in March 2003, and following several weeks of fighting, the regime of Saddam Hussein was finally toppled in April. The power vacuum that ensued was not filled sufficiently quickly, and a powerful insurgency erupted, sponsored by Al-Qa'eda, which is costing the lives of thousands of Iraqi civilians, nearly 3,000 US troops and more than 100 British forces. Politically, it will be the downfall of the Labour Party in the UK. Tony Blair is on the negative side of the debate whether or not he knew there were no NBC weapons in Iraq prior to the invasion.

 It will also play a role in the presidential elections in the US in exactly 2 years' time.
The current mid-term elections there seem to be dominated by sex scandals. If the Iraqi situation does not improve markedly in the next 24 months, and if rates of casualties do not decrease, the Republican Party could be in for a hammering in 2008.