Hussein was arrested in 1964 and imprisoned
in an Arif crackdown on the Ba'athists. He escaped in 1966.
Arif died in a helicopter crash in April
1966 and was succeeded by his older brother. Hussein then figured prominently
in a Ba'athist-led coup that ousted the brother in July 1968. Gen. Ahmad
Hasan al-Bakr, the new president, was Hussein's cousin.
Hussein became vice president and also
took charge of the secret police. He immediately purged and murdered dozens
of Iraqi government officials suspected of disloyalty. He also formulated
policies to suppress the Kurds living in the north and the Shi'ia "Marsh
Arabs" living near Al Basrah in the south. Over the course of the next
30 years, thousands of Kurds and Shi'ia Muslims were murdered, arrested
or deported. Whole villages were razed, and property was confiscated and
turned over to loyal Hussein supporters.
Hussein led the effort to nationalize foreign
oil companies in Iraq in 1972.
He expanded the secret police and appointed
men to the force loyal to him. Bakr resigned in 1979, and Hussein took
over as president. Again, he lost no time in purging and murdering those
in the government he deemed insufficiently loyal.
In 1980, Hussein thought to take advantage
of a weak Iran and trumped up a border dispute over the Shatt al Arab waterway
into a full-scale war. At first, the Iraqi army swept the field, but Iran
refused to admit defeat. Human waves of Iranian "martyrs," some going to
the front with their death shrouds with them, entered the fray. By 1984,
Iran had driven Iraq from its soil and was invading Iraq.
This was when Hussein shifted strategies
and started using chemical weapons on the invading Iranians and on the
Kurdish people in the north of Iraq who opposed him. Thousands are estimated
to have died in these attacks.
The war ended in 1988 with the Iran-Iraq
border pretty much back where it had started. Casualties are estimated
at between 1 million and 1.5 million people.
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein made another
miscalculation. He sent his troops into Kuwait, invoking Iraq's claim on
Kuwait as its 19th province. The invasion also threatened Saudi Arabia,
and the international community responded immediately. The United States
led an international coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Then, as now,
the United Nations tried to reason with Saddam, but he would not go along.
Finally, on Jan. 17, 1991, the Persian
Gulf War began with a coalition air campaign. The ground war started Feb.
24 and Kuwait was liberated in 72 hours. By the time Iraq signed a cease-fire
on March 3, tens of thousands of its soldiers were dead or wounded and
coalition forces had taken tens of thousands more prisoner.
In the pact that ended hostilities, Iraq
agreed to stop persecuting minorities, return prisoners and to rid itself
of weapons of mass destruction.
Following the war, Hussein survived a Kurdish
rebellion in the north and viciously put down a Shi'ite insurrection in
the south. The Northern and Southern No-fly zones were imposed, in part,
so Saddam could not murder his own people.
Since the Gulf War, Iraq has been under
U.N.-imposed economic sanctions. These sanctions would be lifted if the
Iraqi dictator decided to honor his word to the United Nations.
Saddam Hussein has violated every U.N.
Security Council resolution directed at Iraq in the 12 years since the
end of the war. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, passed Nov. 8, 2002,
states he's in "material breach" of those resolutions and now must prove
to the United Nations that he is complying with the will of the international
community.
Hussein is married and has two sons and
three daughters.
Saddam Hussein
was born with a Sun-Uranus conjunction in Taurus (April 28, 1937; 8:06
am; Tikrit, Iraq*), a planetary combination that excels at being unpredictable
and willfully independent of legal norms. With reference to the Scorpio
Rising U.S. horoscope, Saddam's Sun-Uranus sits right on the U.S. 7th house
of open enemies, making him the perfect screen on which to project American
fears, and explaining why Americans, even more than any of Iraq's neighbors,
fear this man.
Saddam's Ascendant is the sign of the twins.
Gemini Rising individuals are noted for their mobility, and since Saddam
has so many secret enemies, he never sleeps in the same place twice. His
defense is to be constantly on the move, and to trick his adversaries with
multiple doubles, decoy convoys, and deep underground bunkers in both Tikrit
and Baghdad. Saddam's many hats, and rotating military and civilian costumes
are also typical of the Gemini Rising individual.
With Gemini Rising, Mercury is the ruler
of his horoscope, and is found in the 12th house of secrets. Mercury is
well-placed here, giving him an uncanny sense of who his enemies are, and
how to avoid their plots. Mercury is in the money-savvy sign of Taurus,
and benefits financially by a trine to plentiful Jupiter, found in the
8th house of corporate wealth. A PBS Frontline report indicates that Saddam
has personally acquired about $20 billion of Iraq's oil revenues and has
it hidden in secret Swiss bank accounts.
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