You don't catch Saddam yaddayaddaing for 2 hours about his Iraqi historical fantasies. He was busy learning to breathe through a pipe with a box fan stuck in it.
I remember reading about Saddam's takeover of the Ba'ath party. That story was a wild ride.
TLDR: Saddam calls an emergency party conference and has the former president's secretary stand up and read a "confession", claiming to be part of a Syrian-backed plot to overthrow the Iraqi government along with a list of names of his "co-conspirators."
As the name of each "co-conspirator' is read, guards come in and take them from the room one at a time. 68 people were removed, charged with treason, and convicted. Saddam has 22 of them sentenced to death, gives the others weapons, and orders them to kill the first group.
Voila! Saddam is now dictator for life.
The craziest thing about that is there's a video documenting the whole thing. It's on YouTube and well worth watching; probably one of the first, if not the first televised coup.
Saddam nonchalantly smoking a cigar while the auditorium's mood goes from confused to hysterical is something to behold. Properly chilling.
Found a clip narrated by the much missed Christopher Hitchens: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CR1X3zV6X5Y
Saddam lived a life of unimaginable luxury for decades, and his sons were evil incarnate, savaging the Iraqi citizens whenever it fit their fancy, with absolute impunity.
They just don't make them like they used to
I wanted to do a reverse of this with resistance forces so I could have Ukraine saying "cuz fuck 'em" but I don't think I actually know of another place that successfully invaded the agressive country's territory
Theres the Hitler / Napoleon arc of conquering Europe then collapsing and having the allied forces invade and occupy the dictators country.
There's also the franco-prussian war where Bismarck goaded Louis Napoleon the dictator of France into declaring war and invading Germany. He then stepped two feet in Germany got surrounded and captured and the prussians/Germans marched all the way to Paris.
These were successful invasions though and ended up with the resistance capturing the aggressors capital. It remains to be seen how well this "invasion" will turn out. As it stands the Ukrainian gains are limited and far from Moscow or any other key strategic locations, meanwhile the Russians are advancing, if slowly, on the main front. This seems more like an incursion then an invasion, like the u.s. invading Canada during the revolution / 1812 with no long term occupation as a result.
How. How did I forget about those conquering arcs. Maybe because those were such a larger scale that my brain considered it a different category of "reverse invasion"?
I KNOW I forgot about franco-prussia because of how quick/silly it was.
Israel and Egypt
WWII?
Be better, dictators
Tuckers perpetual "404" face makes me chuckle.
