NCB, Saddam was an evil fuck, as where his supporters.
Your contributions to this thread, however, seem strange. You attack Saddam over things that aren't all that evil.
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Originally Posted by NCB
they found manuals descrbing their orders which included the obligation to shoot any wannabee deserter, regardless of reason.
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The maximum U.S. penalty for desertion in wartime remains death"
It is true the USA hasn't killed someone for deserting their army since 1945ish, but the USA hasn't been defending it's own land against a hostile power since well before then.
I'd expect any nation's military to shoot people who desert if the enemy was threatening to invade and destroy the country.
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Saddam deprived his own soldiers the basics to survive
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Saddam's nation was under a trade embargo. It had more than enough resources to pay for the feeding of every soldier -- but it wasn't allowed to sell them.
As demonstrated by Gulf War II, even though Saddam was not actually making WMD, Saddam was under threat of American invasion at a whim. It turns out that Saddam properly understood the situation, and directed maximium resources towards his military.
When you are under threat of invasion and occupation, defence is actually more important than anything more than the bare minimium of food.
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Saddam is a monster, that is true. He did use American supplied WMD to kill people who rebelled against him. He did use CIA support to take over the nation of Iraq and turn it into a dictatorship client state of the USA. He did invade Kuwait, another sovereign nation, after asking permission from the US ambassador.
So, like I said, Saddam and his supporters are evil fucks. It is possible they where engaged in a battle against a larger evil -- say, the soviet empire -- using the tactic of "better a lesser evil than a greater". This doesn't explain why there wasn't a decrease in the use of evil tactics after the larger evil -- the soviet empire -- fell apart.
One would have to figure out some other cause -- say, the military/industrial/congressional complex of Eisenhower, the US-president-predicted vested interets who would warp US government policy to be imicle to the American people, to explain that kind of behaviour. Or find some other reasonable explanation.
When you fund and train fanatics to fight a holy war in Afghanistan, when you equip and encourage a military dictator to go to war over disputes, there is sometimes something called "blowback". Blowback is when covert military operations cause fallout on the American people, but the American people aren't told it was pretty much directly caused by American operations.
Continueing the policy of "every president will invade and occupy a nation, under some excuse" will result in a growing chunk of the world being willing to give their lives to kill Americans. Name a president since WWII that hasn't invaded a foriegn nation with military force? Don't you think that is strange?