Bush accuses Saddam of holding "weapons of mass destruction". By April 9, US forces have taken central Baghdad, where a large statue of the Iraqi dictator is toppled. Bush announces the end of major combat operations on May 1 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Gulf under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished".
Saddam is captured hiding near his home town of Tikrit in December. He is hanged three years later. The US-led administration hands political power back to the Iraqis in June , two months after images of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib US military prison shock the world.
The following year, the country votes in its first multi-party election in half a century, a poll boycotted by the Sunni Muslim minority to which Saddam belonged. Many of Hussein's family members were part of his regime: Brother-in-law Brig.
General Adnan Khairallah was Minister of Defense. Sons-in-law General Hussein Kamel, husband to Raghad Hussein, led Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program and his brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel, husband to Rana Hussein, was in charge of the presidential security forces. October - Hussein and others attack the motorcade of Abdul Karim Kassem. The assassination attempt fails and most of the attackers are killed. Hussein escapes and flees to Syria.
February 8, - Kassem is overthrown and executed, and the Baath Party takes over. Hussein returns from Cairo. The new Baath government is overthrown before the end of the year. He later escapes. Hussein becomes secretary and acting deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council.
Iraq gives up claims to the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, while Iran agrees to end its support of the independence seeking Kurds. Khomeini had been in exile in Iraq since Iraqi dictator — , whose attempts to make Iraq a regional superpower led to the Gulf War of Born into a Sunni Muslim peasant family, Saddam joined the radical Ba'ath party in In he received a death sentence for the attempted murder of Abdul Kassim, prime minister of Iraq, but escaped abroad.
After studying law in Cairo, he returned to Iraq when the Ba'athists seized power in Following a second coup later that year, he joined a plot against the new regime, leading to his imprisonment in Escaping once more, he worked in the Ba'athist underground and took a leading role in the coup that brought the party back to power in As deputy chair of the Revolutionary Command Council, Saddam became effective ruler of Iraq, assuming absolute power in when he appointed himself president, prime minister, and head of the armed forces.
Domestically, Saddam's rule has been characterized by the systematic use of terror against political opponents and the creation of an extravagant personality cult. There has been widespread nationalization, notably of the oil industry in Internationally, his goals have been dominance in the Gulf region and the leadership of the Arab world.
That charm was hard to detect when al-Bakr stepped down -- officially, due to illness -- and Saddam took over as president in With a camera recording the event, Saddam told a room full of leading officials that he had uncovered a conspiracy to overthrow the government and, one-by-one, named the alleged traitors.
Sixty-eight men were taken away, and 21 summarily executed. In , he entered a war with Iran that lasted eight years. While casualty counts on both sides vary greatly, some estimates indicate the war cost more than a million lives before ending in a stalemate.
The United Nations alleged that Saddam ordered Iraqi forces to use mustard gas and nerve agents on Iranian soldiers, and that he unleashed chemical weapons on rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in That same year, Saddam's personal life made headlines when his eldest son, Uday, killed one of his father's top aides. After a brief exile in Switzerland, Uday returned to Iraq, where he developed a reputation for eccentric antics, including designing clothing to match his Mercedes, bringing women from other countries into Iraq for sex and shooting guns at his many wild parties, Bowden says.
Two of Saddam's sons-in-law defected from Iraq in , telling Western authorities that the Iraqi government had concealed evidence of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Lured back to Iraq by promises of leniency, Saddam's sons-in-law were shot upon their return.
A year later, would-be assassins shot Uday, partially paralyzing him from the waist down. When asked by CNN while he lay in the hospital about his succeeding his father, Uday replied, "If that was not a question from you, a foreigner, the person who spoke like this would be questioned or punished.
That responsibility, experts say, fell to Saddam's other son, Qusay, who was reportedly being groomed by his father to some day assume control of Iraq. Saddam and his wife Sajida, his first cousin, also had three daughters. Any chance of someday filling their father's shoes ended July 22, , when U. Hoping to reassure Iraqis that the brothers were dead, the Pentagon allowed journalists to shoot still photographs and video of their bodies. The images were broadcast worldwide.
As his powers increased, so did Saddam's quirks and fixations, according to several men who have studied him. The Iraqi ruler's speeches were printed in large letters so he did not have to wear glasses -- and be seen as less than perfect -- in public, Bowden says. Saddam also forbade journalists from videotaping him walking any distance, Bowden adds, so no one would see footage of his pronounced limp.
His contempt for U. A voracious reader, Saddam is said to have penned romantic or fantasy novels. The dictator also wrote a copy of the Quran in his own blood, according to the Iraqi media, which reported that Saddam was descended from Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
Saddam's fear of assassination prompted him to take several extreme measures. He slept just four or five hours a night, always in secret locations, Bowden says. Not only was all of his food carefully prepared and inspected, but the chefs in each of his more than 20 palaces also cooked three elaborate meals a day - whether Saddam was to eat there or not.
Whatever his fears and challenges, Saddam showed defiance, obstinacy and a propensity to take risks ever since coming on the Iraqi political scene in the late s. That boldness was evidenced in , when Saddam -- his nation's economy in shambles -- ordered troops and tanks to roll into Iraq's oil-rich neighbor to the south, Kuwait.
In , a U. But just like the end of Iraq's stalemate with Iran three years earlier, Saddam declared victory.
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