World Blog by humble servant.Five years ago Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and lived to tell the tale. But how? Robert Fisk tells a survival story Robert Fisk @indyvoices Wednesday 2 August 1995 00:02 0 comments Click to follow The Independent We need him. Five years after his invasion of Kuwait, we love him - in the sense that we feel affection for familiar ogres, like Dracula or James Cagney. Saddam Hussein even looks like the man who tied ladies to railway lines in silent movies. And because of his longevity, because we have also learnt to hate him but to go on living with him, we would miss him if he went. For without Saddam, who would persuade the Saudis and Kuwaitis and the other Gulf Arabs to go on spending their billions on our weaponry? Without him, how would America's strategy of "containment" work in the Arab world? And without him, who would "contain" Iran?

ARCHIVES | 1990
The Iraqi Invasion; INVADING IRAQIS SEIZE KUWAIT AND ITS OIL; U.S. CONDEMNS ATTACK, URGES UNITED ACTION                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       When he started building a nuclear power station on the banks of the Tigris river, the Israelis bombed it. When he invaded Iran, we tut-tutted and sold him more planes and guns. When he invaded Kuwait, we sent the planes and the guns to bomb him. Even when the Iranian war was over and Iraq's half-million dead were in their graves, there he was again in front of the world's press, primping himself up as Nebuchadnezzar, tracing his ancestry back to the Prophet Mohammed, daring the world to confront him.