[regularization]

Isn't this the country the US and UK invaded in 2003 because of non-existent WMDs (shades of Iran today) and overthrew the nationalist, secular leader, so that it has now fallen more into the hands of Islamists?

Incidentally Iraq's parliament told the US military to leave in 2020 and the US has refused. So this is going on under the continued US military occupation of this country.

[kstrauser]

> and overthrew the nationalist, secular leader

Two things can be true at once:

1. The US invaded on false pretenses. We should never have been there.

2. Saddam Hussein and his family were brutal dictators who shouldn't be mourned. We didn't exactly topple the leadership of, say, Sweden.

Hussein was a secular leader in much the same way as Stalin was. Their horrific abuses weren't driven by religion, but that's little comfort to the lives they destroyed.

[orwin]

Saddam wasn't secular in the sense western audience understand the word.

[free652]

>secular leader

Eh what? Hahahaha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Campaign

[regularization]

This happened two years after the US invaded. In fact the US had encouraged religious Shiite uprising in the south, which is universally acknowledged. The US military invasion shifting power to mullahs, the Baathist has to make concessions, which they had not for decades before.