At 2:00 A.M. (local time) on August second 1990, Saddam Hussein sent the Iraqi military across the border into Kuwait, and sparked a war whose repercussions are still being felt. Today what eventually became known as the Persian Gulf War, featured the largest air operation in history; and a senseless destruction paralleled only to Danzig or Hiroshima. Even though Saddam was the one who physically invaded Kuwait, is balking at United Nations resolutions, and is generally known as a tyrant. He should not be destroyed . The Gulf War was nothing more than the United States attempting to establish, as former President Bush so aptly termed, the 'New Order'. The United States supported Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath regime prior to the Kuwaiti invasion. They even gave Saddam a 'Green Light' to go ahead and invade. If Saddam were to leave power Iraq would either be plunged into a Lebanon style civil war or face another ruler no better than Saddam himself. While many people in this country believe Saddam Hussein should be destroyed, that he is a totalitarian dictator and gross human rights violator. He is, in fact, a stabilizing force in his country and the Middle-East, standing up to the only remaining superpower.
The consensus currently prevalent in this country is that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, is a totalitarian dictator, thirsty for blood and prestige, who seems dedicated to disobeying the United States. It would seem Iraq is intent on keeping United Nation inspectors out of its own country, although technically 'Iraq barred only American members of the inspection teams from carrying on their work'(Nelan 54). The Iraqi 'Dictator' seems to have decided he would rather be bombed than inspected. He apparently has no regard for the international community, and yet still wants them to lift sanctions. Also the Iraqi:
'government stopped Ritter from investigating sensitive sites, calling him a spy and complaining that his team was too 'Anglo-American'... the Iraqis also revealed Ritter was looking for evidence Iraq tested chemical and biological weapons on humans - charge Baghdad called 'a shear lie'' (Watson 34).
Those reports of human testing are obviously false. '[E]ven Saddams strongest foes, including the C.I.A. seems to doubt them(Watson 34)'. In fact, the only testing done by Iraq was on dogs. There were no inspectors around when the U.S. committed the crimes at Tuskegee, or when hundreds of servicemen were exposed to radiation during the atomic tests in the sixties. The Iraqi 'dictator' has stayed in power for some 8 years since sanctions were imposed. The sanctions were imposed supposedly to punish and weaken Saddams power, freeing the people to take up arms and oust him. However, the sanctions have hurt only the people of Iraq, and if anything have strengthened Saddams position. If Saddam is a human rights abuser as many maintain then, the U.S. is a human rights abuser as well.
When the Soviet Union fell, the United States became the sole superpower, thus, many countries no longer fearing the U.S.S.R. began to loosen their ties with the U.S. The U.S. soon found itself in a precarious position. It needed to a reason for other countries to appease the U.S.; the U.S. also needed to demonstrate 'the 'New World Order' in which a post-Cold War United States could operate without the bothersome constraints of another world superpower'(Simons 3). The United States found itself in a unique position immediately following the collapse of Communist Russia; it was now the only superpower, with the most powerful military, economic, and political might. It now needed to demonstrate how the U.S. would behave without the check of another equal power. An opportunity soon arose however; Iraq, whom we supported the previous decade during the Iran-Iraq War, began sending out hints that it might invade Kuwait. We Essentially told Saddam to go ahead (see below). When Iraq did take over Kuwait the then President Bush decided to disprove his media stereotype of being a wimp and decided that the most powerful country on earth should wage war on a third world county. A note on Bush's foreign policy hypocrisy:

'at the time of the Gulf War George Bush was the one head of state who stood condemned by the world court for 'the unlawful use of force'. Bush contemptuously dismissed the Court's demand for the payment of reparations to Nicaragua, while eager to demand reparations from Iraq. In 1975 Bush had become head of the CIA, just in time to support the Indonesian extermination of a third the population of East Timor. He supported Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and then opposed U.N. resolution 425 demanding an immediate Israeli withdrawal'(Simons 325).

President Bush was not the altuistic leader, courageously standing up evil. Rather he embodied the global hypocrisy of the U.S. in the modern world. The U.S. now began scurrying around the globe threatening and buying consensus (there is an advantage to being the largest provider of economic aid, the U.S. can buy support buy offering the cancellation of debt or threaten to halt humanitarian aid (Simons 321).). The United States' War, nearly did not get U.N. approval.' Once the 'World Consensus' had been bought the U.S. began one of the largest air bombardments in history, destroying Iraq's infrastructure and murdering thousands of hapless conscripts (Simons 345). Once Iraq was totally decimated by air, the ground forces moved in burying hundreds of bodies in the sifting sand in mass graves with no body count, and in direct violation of the Geneva accords (Simons 346). Iraq was now pushed to the lowest rungs of civilization. It was no wonder then that with no running water, sanitation destroyed, low on food, short on medical supplies, and still under U.N. sanctions that the Iraqi people had, and still have, a vindictive attitude toward the U.S.. What the U.S. did to Iraq is inexcusable, the U.S. and more specifically ...