Kristian Sims
Mrs. Burroughs
10th ELA
4 December 2014 The Tragic Assassination of Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein had died on December 12, 2003 and that was the day he was found by U.S forces, hiding in a hole on a relative’s farm outside his hometown of Tikrit. No one in Iraq had ever seen him more vulnerable. There he was…. on television, dirt smeared on his face, his beard all disorganized, his thick head of hair graying. Many had wondered was this the same man who had been beamed into Iraqi living rooms for hour, delivering speeches in a pressed uniform, his hair smartly dyed black, and his mustache full and neat? Was this the man who took on Iran? The man who lobbed rockets at Israel and threatened the President of the United States? At that moment all confusion had left their mind and soon came to be that every dictator who lives long enough becomes: a frightened old man and all alone. The man who seen himself as a modern dictator was born on April 28, 1937 on the banks of the Tigris River just south of Tikrit. Saddam never knew his father who disappeared six months before Hussein was actually born. He was then raised by his mother and uncle who was an Iraq nationalist and early supporter of the Iraqi who had a huge influence on young Saddam. Later Saddam joined the pan-Arab nationalist Baath party in 1957. Two years later, at the age of 22, Suddam was then part of a plot to assassinate General Abdul Karim Kassem who had overthrown the monarchy a year before.