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In 1979 Saddam took power, his first act was kidnapping and killing a few of his close comrades or whatever you call them.
In 1980, the Iraq-Iran war started to drag the people into worthless 8 years of war that Iraq closed its borders for and made it near impossible for Iraqis to travel and see the world. So people are locked in for 8 years with no real breathing space. Iraqis had a breathing period from 1988 to 1990 when the Iraqi government opened the restriction on travel after the war. And then Iraq went into Kuwait and Iraqis get locked again, a nation of about 24 million at that time locked by its own government again. And then world super powers bombed these people.

Iraqis were under fire for saddam's decision to invade Kuwait. At that time, president bush, the father, encouraged Iraqis to rise against the system. Rise they did and a mass slaughter by saddam's regime followed. The United States did not intervene. If you think that Iraqis were not targeted in that war you are just plain wrong. Pointing a bullet at someone is one way of targeting them, but there are so many other ways to hit people hard without pointing the gun on there face.

With saddam's army in Kuwait, the US goal was to kick him out. How can a water purification unit be a legitimate target when the goal of the mission is to get Saddam out of Iraq? An oil refinery next to a residential area in Baghdad got hit many times as well - the refinery that made gas available to "normal" Iraqis, not the regime. Those in the regime never needed anything. They were protected. In fact, services including fuel to those who were close to the regime were never cut, while ordinary Iraqis got stuck in dealing with inhumane behavior of the "peace loving coalition" and the inhumane behavior of the Iraqi regime.

Bridges, hospitals, communication center, electricity power plants, sewage system units and water purification units in many Iraqi cities were targeted and many in Baghdad (330 miles from Kuwait) were destroyed. That is a lot more than the distance between New York and Washington dc.

So Iraqis go through this, then they are de-humanized by saddam's regime again, as he continued to rule with an iron fist. Of course, we should not forget how the UN sanctions against Iraq used Iraqi as Ginny pigs for their own experimental policy on how to get a nation down on its knees. The experiment proved that the only group that got affected is simple and ordinary people, while the government of the sanctioned

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