by Carlos Hurworth

Created on: August 15, 2009   Last Updated: August 17, 2009

With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the welcoming of US troops into Iraq came scenes of liberation and freedom, which saw people burning effigies of the former tyrant, tearing down statues and defacing the giant portraits of Saddam on the city's walls. They were scenes of jubilation, graphic in their depiction of a people's freedom - something they hadn't tasted properly, for a long time.

People have often sought to liberate themselves from tyrannical governments or leaders, on their own - the fall of the soviet union at the end of the 1980's is one remarkable event that rallied millions of people together across Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary and more, and forced massive regimes to crumble, almost overnight. So what is it that causes international intervention - whether it be the US, a US-led coalition, NATO or others - to result in such gratuitous amounts of thanks being shown to these foreign invaders for their presence?

Saddam's rule in Iraq saw him strangle the nation at his own will. He controlled the masses with torture, assassinations, executions, murders, deportation and the destruction of people's livelihoods through destroying their crops. The actual number of deaths that he was responsible throughout his almost 25 year rule, is still not entirely known. Some sources claim that Saddam was responsible for the death of 1 million Iraqis. Freedom from such great oppression is clearly thanked for, but it simply isn't just a case of one nation's compassion and empathy and one nation's struggle and need.

Simple facts clearly show that intervention comes only when there are gains to be made. - And that's putting it lightly. Ulterior motives would better describe some cases, especially those of US involvement in Iraq, for example. One need only consider Iraq's massive oil reserves - estimated to be somewhere around 400 billion barrels (according to a former manager of the US's Gulf Oil company) - to gain some idea of US motivation for Iraqi liberation. And then there is also the massive interest that weapons manufacturers General Electric and Westinghouse have in war as well (oh yes, that also do electrical appliances and own significant sections of the news media). - To put it simply, if America or its allies are at war, then the production lines of these two corporate giants will continue to feed their massive profits. Parts that helped to build the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were

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