"More like invasion to satisfy a couple of egocentric politicians."

Well, there was that little matter of Saddam Hussein's ruthless attitude to anyone who disagreed with him.

It started in July 1978, when he issued a memorandum decreeing that anyone whose ideas came into conflict with those of the Baath Party leadership would be subject to summary execution.

Almost exactly four years later (July 1982)Shiite militants attempted to assassinate him. Saddam responded by ordering the slaughter of 148 civilians, including dozens of children.

In 1983 Masoud Barzani, a Kurdish revolutionary, allied himself to the Iranians in the Iran/Iraq war. Hussein had 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, (including hundreds of women and children) abducted. It is assumed that most if them were murdered. Thousands of them were later discovered in a mass grave in the South of Iraq.

Between 1986 and 1989 Saddam ordered the extermination of every living thing in Kurdish regions in the North of Iraq. The result was the killing of 182,000 men, women and children with chemical weapons.

He destroyed 95% of the marshes in South East Iraq, causing a famine that reduced the number of marsh Arabs from 250,000 to less than 40,000.

Give me a couple of egocentric politicians any day.

Somewhen in the middle of FE's chronicle of Saddam's atrocities, Iran was the enemy (whose civilian airliner was shot out of the sky) and Saddam was the bud, the pal, the quid pro quo to contain said enemy.

I thought the Iraq invasion was all about the threat to saudi, there was a fear Iraq would storm into saudi for their oil, similar to Kuwait.

"Saddam might have been a ruthless and savage dictator, but he wasn't that stupid" Yes, he was , as was demonstrated by his invasion of Kuwait.

He and his sons had to go for all the reasons FE mentions. I just wish that other dictators,eg Mugabe et al,would realise there is a line that cannot be crossed without retribution but sadly , as is seen in a few countries at present, such people do seem to think they are invulnerable. Sadly some powerful countries, such as Russia and China, seem to have little regard to such abuses in the name of non interferance, no doubt because they do not want to set a precedent. Should we sit idly by? eg Bosnia, Kosovo?

"Yes, he was , as was demonstrated by his invasion of Kuwait."

That wasn't stupid, it was a simple mistake. As an old ally of Russia he thought they would veto any UN intervention, like they have in Syria. They didn't.

At the end of it he was still in power, probably even stronger internally. Certainly his repression of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs became even more harsh.

It was the West that was stupid, for not finishing the job first time around.