Response to rating: Yeah, you can take it as a given that Americans have had a hand in just about everything in the Middle East for several decades. So that probably includes Saddam Hussein's rise to power... but I think it would have happened on its own regardless. I don't like Saddam Hussein; I don't like America's Middle East policy. So I chose to keep my answer more neutral/objective and not open what I know would be a big can of worms by talking about that. I figured I'd avoid long arguments, negative ratings, etc. But you can never talk about the Middle East without failing to satisfy someone. Sorry if things weren't clear, Ahmed... I chose that quote because I figured that whoever asked the question was probably more interested in dates, Saddam Hussein's earlier career,etc. and might have been turned off if I had started out with American political conspiracy theory right off the bat. Original answer: I quote from http://www.abcnews.com: "Saddam joined the socialist Baath party when he was 19. He made his mark three years later when he participated in a 1959 assassination attempt against Iraqi Prime Minister Abudul Karim Kassim. Saddam was shot in the leg during the botched effort and fled the country for several years, first to Syria, then Egypt. In 1968 he helped lead the revolt that finally brought the Baath party to power under Gen. Ahmed Hassan Bakr. In the process, he landed the vice president's post, from which he built an elaborate network of secret police to root out dissidents. Eleven years later he deposed Bakr and plastered the streets with 20-foot-high portraits of himself." My editorial notes: 1. Calling the Baath party socialist is a bit of an oversimplification, but there is some correlation. The Baath party was started in Syria, but there was some factional split and the more hard-line version ended up in Iraq. Therefore it isn't completely accurate to refer to the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties as being the same (President Bush, are you reading this?), although they're certainly closely related. This is why he would have been able to flee to Syria after the failed assassination attempt on the prime minister. 2. I'm not an expert on Iraqi politics. Saddam Hussein is definitely a dictator who came to power through a coup, but there were various "elections" in which he was re-elected. However, there was a high level of electoral corruption each time, and the ballot basically consisted of "Saddam Hussein: Yes or No" without any other candidates presenting themselves.

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