Why did we have Saddam Hussain killed?

Question

When we pulled him out of that spider hole, why didn't we dust him off, get him a haircut and shave, and put him back in power as "our man in Iraq"?

He had no military.

He had no weapons.

He knew how to keep the oil flowing.

He knew how to keep the Iraqi people from killing each other.

He did a half-way decent job of keeping Iran tied up.

And if he ever got out of line, we could always smack him around some to show him who's really got the nuclear balls.

Seems a waste of a perfectly bad tyrant. He could by our tyrant.

Answer 1

we let the free people of Iraq do it for us. They were the ones murdered by him for 20 years. He was much too psychotic and amoral to follow anyone elses lead.  He would never have been our puppet.

Answer 2

The Iraqis wanted revenge and brought Husain's own death penalty upon his head. That's what I heard...

Answer 3

listen champ, he was courted under Iraqi law, that means....DUMMY STYLE....that means, THE IRAQIS CHARGED HIM AND HAD HIM KILLED....HANGED .....

Answer 4

His own government prosecuted him and killed him, for the crimes he has commited against them. The US had no role in his court proceedings

Answer 5

he killed many many MANY of his own people, there was one, where he was testing a poison, so he put it in the water, where civilians would drink out of it, killing many that drank out of it.

uhhm, is there a reason we would keep him alive?

(edit):by we i mean thh iraqis

Answer 6

Because George Bush said so!  That is a good enough reason, isn't it?

Answer 7

You know you just said out the best decision possible for that part of the world. That's what exactly should've been done. USA couldn't have had gotten anymore better expert of middle east than Hussein. Now it'll cause more trouble for America to get peace over there as Muslims are generally a bit too conservative and fundamentalist and don't trust outsiders too easily. But if Saddam was made American controller in the middle east, it could've also happened that if with this sudden loose grip by America, maybe he could've also become what I'd called "Middle East's KPS Gill".

P.S. Want to know who's Gill? He's someone whom everybody of a place of the world want to kill and eat all up and don't even leave the bones.

Answer 8

Right, and what are you smoking?

The only bad thing that happened was, we gave him back so they could kill him. I think if we had him we should have been the ones to have the fun of dragging him behind a truck minus his head!

Answer 9

gee, i wonder...he was only the hiter of our day!! omg

Answer 10

But we already have a tyrant - Bush. World isn't big enough for two.  

Answer 11

We didn't kill him. The people of Iraq put him on trial for his many atrocities, such as having his political opponents executed, gassing 5,000 Kurds in 1988. About 300,000 people were buried in mass graves that were discovered in Iraq. Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity.  

Answer 12

Because it *suited* us ( I say us.. but I really mean the Bush administration)

just as a side note...

a work-collegue of mine has just returned from visiting family in Turkey. There has been many bombings and possible terrorist attacks with many people being blamed... one group which is causing trouble for the Turks .. are the Kurds. We condemned Saddam for his treatment of the Kurds... who incidently had the support of Iran (remember we once thought they were the baddies and saddam was the goodguy)... BUT perhaps it was more a case of controlling the Kurds to prevent the kind of things happening in Iraq that are happening in Turkey....

I agree with you .. Saddam was one bad dude... but was he as bad as we were being told?

do all the people answering your question really understand the dynamics and complexities of that area..??

We also forget that WE were the ones that gave saddam so many of the wmd that we claimed he still had.. to use against Iran... (gasses were used against the Kurds who WERE being supported by Iran)

We took a country that was stable.. and functioning and did it over with a phillip's head well and proper...Saddam was a moderate...

YET we allow Robert Mugabee to be in africa...

It is no other nation's responsibility to make a regime change happen..

Answer 13

We didn't.. The Iraqi people did..

Answer 14

He killed people in Iraq for no reason!! As a republic we are suppose to be against that!! Judging by what you use as your name aren't you suppose to be a Humanist? You should understand this and he was in on the plan on 9/11. Gosh you'd think people would pay more attention to this stuff!

Answer 15

He WAS the West's tyrant for a long time years ago, and not the only tyrant the West was quite happy to supply with weapons, etc, so long as it suited "our" interests.

So also was the Shah of Persia (Iran), so when there was a leftist and fundamentalist revolution there, the people remembered and so the West became the enemy.

Yesterday's friends can be tomorrow's enemies but you and I don't make foreign policy, that's politicians. Don't you think anyone who wants to become a politician should be disqualified for life?

Answer 16

His trial and execution were conducted by Iraqis, not Americans.

Answer 17

excellent point.  i tell people this all the time.  US troops are now being killed by the very people we helped liberate!

saddam hated alqeda, he hated the shia militias.  he hated iran and was a thorn in the side of the saudi wahabi regime.

we killed saddam and now iran almost has nukes and when iraq become US free they will become an islamic sharia state that hates America!

We should've kept saddam in power, paid him a few billion and not a single american or brit needed to die in that region.  bought our oil like everyone else rather than overthrowing dictators we grow tired of and setting up unstable puppet regimes.

plus there were WMDs in Iraq, Rumsfeld was the one who brokered the deal and we sold wmds to Iraq.  Saddam was exectuted in a barbaric way and just for the record his capture and subsequent video was released by the military in clear contradiction of the geneva convention.  his execution was also filmed, again in clear violation of the geneva convention yet we (rightly so) complain when our guys are paraded in front of the cameras.

saddam was executed, along with his family, to cover up all those deals that went on between the US, France, Britain and  Iraq.

we lost a valuable ally when we overthrew iraq and we will be paying for it in the next decade when iraq joins forces with iran.

Answer 18

He had to die - anyone who wears a mustache like that must be eliminated before influencing our young to start growing them.