What exactly made Saddam Hussein any worse than any OTHER ruthless dictator?

Question

Nobody against the war in Iraq is debating the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil, ruthless, maniacal tyrant, but why him? Why not any of the other evil dictators in the world, like the ones in Africa, South America, or Asia? Why not Kim Jong Il who actually HAD WMD's, admitted it, and isn't planning on getting rid of them anytime soon?

These are some of the responses I often hear, and my reply is quite simple,

"Other dictators have done that too."

Killed and tortured a ton of his own people.

Invaded another country.

Ignored the UN on something

Had WMD's at some point.

Supported some form of terrorism.

Answer 1

The targeting of Saddam was a thinly veiled personal vendetta. Not to mention the oil.

Answer 2

No one has really given you an answer yet.
Why Saddam and not any one else? Fairly simple but only cause it took me a few years to figure it out.
Bush was profoundly affected by 9/11, he really feels deeply the idea of "not on my watch", but it was his watch and he wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. He felt that no one in the world would never have tried this crap during the cold war. It had been too long since the US flexed its muscles and all the fringe groups that hate us had forgotten what "most powerful nation on earth" means.
Invading Afganistan was a no-brainer but didn't prove anything to anyone. The real hooror there came from a video of Osama admitting to his buddies that he planned 9/11. In the video he was asked if he was afraid of the US going to Afganistan. He said that ofcourse they will come but he needs only to kill a few of thier precious rangers (aka somolia) and they will run home crying.
Bush was mortified. We were no longer feared. The entire point of a military is to discourage attack. You use it every now and then to remind people its there but it is primarily a deterant. Bush needed to scare these guys. All of them. To do that he needed to pick a fight. Win the fight. And take "significant losses" in the process. He had to show that we would come for you if you wronged us and that we would not run from a few losses. Afganistan had not made this point. He was sure it had to be bigger. So - the Axis of Evil. These are the top three bad guys. Powerful militaries by world standards and anti US governments.
North Korea has nukes and no strategic value. You can let them rot and they will not do too much damage to you. Keep up the pressure by sending them the message along with everyone else.
Iran has a growing internal reform movement and could actually fix itself (or so it looked in the 01-02 timeframe).
Iraq...Bingo. Powerful military even after the sanctions. Big pile of violated UN resolutions. Really ugly history. And Saddam had recently stated that he was willing to use oil as a weapon against the US. He had asked OPEC to force prices higher to squeeze the US economy.
Bush used the WMD story to take us to war. It's what everyone wanted to hear. Could have handled that better but really its not how we got there but rather was the war the right way to go at the time. Not sure. I'm not President. I do know that the "poor exicution of the war" was kinda on purpose. We need need to loose lives to prove the point. Now that is a hard call as commander in chief.

Answer 3

This article happens to be the first time that I heard of Ron Paul. In linking to the article, I don't mean to be tossing up Ron Paul spam - this really answers your question.

Our political elite rely upon the dollar's status as the world reserve currency. Key to this status is the fact that most oil transactions are settled in dollars. Oil is the de facto commodity backing the dollar.

Saddam Hussein was indeed a bad person. But one theory is that his ultimate crime was to accept oil transactions in Euros.

An excerpt from the article (please check out the entire article in the link below):

"
Most importantly, the dollar/oil relationship has to be maintained to keep the dollar as a preeminent currency. Any attack on this relationship will be forcefully challenged—as it already has been.

In November 2000 Saddam Hussein demanded Euros for his oil. His arrogance was a threat to the dollar; his lack of any military might was never a threat. At the first cabinet meeting with the new administration in 2001, as reported by Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, the major topic was how we would get rid of Saddam Hussein-- though there was no evidence whatsoever he posed a threat to us. This deep concern for Saddam Hussein surprised and shocked O’Neill.

It now is common knowledge that the immediate reaction of the administration after 9/11 revolved around how they could connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks, to justify an invasion and overthrow of his government. Even with no evidence of any connection to 9/11, or evidence of weapons of mass destruction, public and congressional support was generated through distortions and flat out misrepresentation of the facts to justify overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

There was no public talk of removing Saddam Hussein because of his attack on the integrity of the dollar as a reserve currency by selling oil in Euros. Many believe this was the real reason for our obsession with Iraq. I doubt it was the only reason, but it may well have played a significant role in our motivation to wage war. Within a very short period after the military victory, all Iraqi oil sales were carried out in dollars. The Euro was abandoned.
"

Answer 4

Actually, there isn't a lot of difference between one ruthless dictator and another, but the neighbors and environment ARE different. Our US ally South Korea is in range of anything Kim Jong Il might decide to do, and they would prefer to reason with him. Hitler was killing people by the millions, and we knew it, but it took a while to stop him. Pol Pot was doing the same thing, but communications out of Laos was not too consistent, and no one realized how bad it was until after millions had died. Ditto on Stalin, who killed news out of the USSR, so we didn't realize he had killed over 30 million until after he died. Different results from different situations, is all.
AND, there are some differences based on perception as well. In the USA, most of us regard Fidel Castro as a ruthless dictator, but that perception is not necessarily shared even by his own citizens, so we gotta examiine the assumptions carefully.

Answer 5

The simplest reason which makes all the others irrelevant is

he violated the cease-fire agreement that ended the first gulf war when he expelled the UN weapons inspectors.

As soon as the terms of the cease-fire were breached the shooting war was back on. No further authorization was needed.

All of the other reasons remain true, but are unneccessary. He was an evil murderous tyrant. A state sponsor of terrorism. He invaded Kuwait. He used chemical weapons on his own people. and he refused all attempts at diplomacy. But a cease-fire is not a peace treaty. It is a temporary agreement to stop shooting as long as certain conditions are met. Clinton should have enforced it when Saddam ejected the inspectors.

Answer 6

PNAC had been planning a war on Iraq long before GW was installed in the White House. they were just waiting for a "Pearl Harbor-like incident" to justify attacking Iraq so as to secure a strangle hold on Mideast oil reserves thereby furthering their Imperial Americana agenda. 9/11 provided that "Pearl Harbor-like" incident. if Saddam hadn't been sitting atop the 3rd largest oil reserve in the world he could have massacred his people to his evil heart's content and the Bush admin wouldn't have lifted a finger to stop him. mega corporations determine American policies now, both foreign and domestic, and Big Oil is THE most influential of policy makers.

Answer 7

The Democrats voted for it, don't forget! Saddam vocalized his desire to bring about our destruction...and he was located directly between major terrorist strongholds #2 and #3...Iran and Syria.

For that matter, ya big doofus, we were well aware that Saddam was siphoning BILLIONS of dollars off of the Oil-For-Food program, thus realistically being able to fund a possible purchase of said WMD's. Most dictators don't have access to that kind of capital. Do you think that maybe the intelligence that all of the Democrat morons in congress read may have indicated this, and that is why they voted for it? They get to read classified information, you know. They act 'ignorant' now, but it's just political deceit.

In simple english, Saddam had more resources to cause more damage. Why do you think France fought us so hard going in there? Because Saddam was a huge cash cow for their country, as was evidenced by their involvement once the scandal broke and we found the paper trail! Thank goodness we got in there before he did build any WMD's.

Answer 8

penster is dead on the main reason is the euro issue. Once dollar diplomacy falls we take a big hit. Controlling the oil was a nice side benefit. Until the elite have their money safe in euros we will be dealing with this.

Answer 9

Just that Bush decided to go after Saddam by starting this war. Now you see the mess that Bush has caused.

Answer 10

actually, prior to the invasion ol' saddam was number 5 on a list of ten worst human rights abusers put out by amnesty international. so he was only a so-so madman.

Answer 11

We sold weapons to Saddam and said "You go kick those Irani butts!"
Then we turned around and sold weapons to Iran saying "You go kick those Iraqi butts!"

Saddam found out, and for some reason stopped cooperating with the US, therefore he had to be eliminated.