Johan Franzen, University of East Anglia Following his capture by American troops, Saddam Hussein made a startling admission to George Piro, the FBI investigator tasked with interrogating him. The reason he had played cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors for over a decade was not because he was trying to hide Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction from …
Read More »Tag Archives: Saddam Hussein
How someone becomes a torturer
At the Amna Suraka museum in Iraq, exhibits show the torture that was carried out in the cells. Hélène Veilleux/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA Christopher Justin Einolf, Northern Illinois University Every day, thousands of people are tortured in police stations, security offices and prisons around the world. Human rights organizations protest torture and advocate for survivors, but neither they nor the public …
Read More »Why Blair really went to war
Owen D. Thomas, University of Exeter As Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry findings are published, we should resist what’s become the easy refrain: “Blair Lied. Thousands Died.” If we actually want to learn from what happened, we should recognise that Tony Blair has been remarkably consistent in his view that the removal of the regime was necessary, whether or not …
Read More »Iraq: thousands of police officers have died in the line of duty
EPA-EFE/Ahmed Jalil Lily Hamourtziadou, Birmingham City University Being a police officer in post-Saddam Iraq is an incredibly dangerous career choice. Since the invasion of Iraq toppled the dictator in March 2003, at least 14,000 Iraqi police officers have lost their lives in the line of duty. And things are not getting much safer. In the first four months of 2021, …
Read More »Gulf War: 30 years on, the consequences of Desert Storm are still with us
Lorena De Vita, Utrecht University and Amir Taha, University of Amsterdam It was a short message to end a short war. On February 26 1991, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz put his signature to a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council: I have the honour to notify you that the Iraqi Government reaffirms its agreement to comply fully …
Read More »How Iraq’s relationship with Iran shifted after the fall of Saddam Hussein
Johan Franzen, University of East Anglia Following his capture by American troops, Saddam Hussein made a startling admission to George Piro, the FBI investigator tasked with interrogating him. The reason he had played cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors for over a decade was not because he was trying to hide Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction from …
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