sein took all power into his hands, where it would remain until his ouster by the
U.S. military in 2003.
Hussein’s rule evolved into nearly twenty-five years of almost endless conflict and
economic disaster for Iraq. Less than a year after taking sole control of the govern-
ment, he launched a long and ultimately fruitless war with Iran. Two years after the
end of that war, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, only to be defeated by an international
military coalition headed by the United States. A dozen years of UN-sponsored eco-
nomic sanctions followed, depriving Iraq of most of its oil export revenue and leav-
ing the country an economic basket case. The United States, with the invasion of
2003, promised to bring democracy and economic stability to Iraq, and a democracy
did emerge in the form of an elected government that gave political power to the
majority Shiites for the first time. Four years after the invasion, however, Iraq remained
an extremely violent place headed by new leaders trying, with only modest success, to
salvage the national unity that the British had imposed eight decades earlier.
IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 419