House of Saddam

Happy New Year all!!

I spent all day Sunday at home as I am sick. While at home I watched the four part HBO BBC series "House of Saddam". It was pretty good overall but had several inaccuracies and definitely has a western slant.

The movie kind of had a soap opera t.v. drama kind of undertone to it. The movie begins with with the birthday celebration of his daughter Hala and then goes on to show him become president of Iraq. We see some drama some killings yada ya. Then the next part shows Saddam ready to wage war with Iran after the Iranian Revolution. They show the cartoons and various types of propaganda Saddam used to promote the Iraq Iran war. But, one huge factor left out was that the U.S. supported Iraq during the war. The U.S. sold Iraq military equipment. Looking at the Iraq Iran war there is no way Iraq could have fought as long as it did against Iran. At the time of the war Iran had the 5th largest standing army in the world and Iraq... well lets just say they didn't even make the top 15. Gee I wonder why American military aid wasn't shown in the movie.

I think the movie didn't show Iraq at its high time in the 70s and 80s. Iraq was a country on the come up at that time. It was actually quite modern. Not at all saying that I agreed with Saddam and his approach to governing but Iraq had good infrastructure and was revamping the school system to battle the high illiteracy rates. Yes Saddam was erratic and a dictator but, he did some good things for the country. In part 3 of the movie it shows President George H.W. Bush giving his speech about Iraq withdrawing from Kuwait and then shows Desert Storm. We see the bombs drop and the fire but the audience never sees the real damage. When Desert Storm occurred I'm sure General LeMay was proud we bombed Iraq into the stone age. The images we currently see of Iraq is not the place it once was. Desert Storm shook the country down.

The soap opera part come with the drama with the daughters husbands. Basically they are top advisors in Saddam's regime and betray him and he eventually has him killed and the daughters are upset about it. Actually Hala's husband surrendered to the coalition forces in 2003. What was this drama for? This is not supposed to be the Sopranos

The mini-series was okay overall. But, I don't think the average person would understand the series. To really understand Desert Storm you need to know a little about the history of the Middle East. Like when Saddam says "to the party" my homeboy was like what party? The Ba'thist party. I could critique the movie on several other points but ahh why go there. I just had to point out the Western slant. One could easily argue this series is a propaganda piece. Any who... I'm back will be here sharing my thoughts