Does Lessons from Saddam Hussein Teach Us Anything About Kim Jong-un?
I share the below story about Saddam Hussein because it makes me wonder how much we really know about Kim Jong-un? Every week it seems there is some new sensational report about Kim Jong-un sourced to some anonymous defector account much like with Saddam Hussein. How accurate are these accounts? I have speculated before that I don’t think Kim Jong-un is as all powerful as believed. I believe he instead rules with the consensus of a regime inner circle which it appears that Saddam had largely handed off power to in his country before the war 2003:
Saddam Hussein was an inept dictator during his final years in charge, thought 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer together and took partial blame for his eventual fall from power after the 2003 US-led invasion, according to a new book by one of the men who interrogated the ex-Iraqi president.
The revelations are contained in the upcoming John Nixon book “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.” Nixon was a CIA analyst in Iraq who had been assigned the task of finding Saddam and then getting information out of him. But he quickly found that “Saddam seemed clueless.”
“He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm,” Nixon wrote in the book excerpt published by The Daily Mail.
Saddam, who was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity, was frequently defiant while being interviewed and even mocked the US rationale for the war: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
“You found a traitor who led you to Saddam Hussein. Isn’t there one traitor who can tell you where the WMDs are?” Hussein said shortly after he was found hiding, dirty and grizzled, inside an underground “spider hole” on Dec. 13, 2003.
The sadistic despot said Iraq had never thought about using WMDs and questioned why “anyone with full faculties” would deploy chemical weapons unprovoked. [New York Post]
You can read more at the link.
“I don’t think Kim Jong-un is as all powerful as believed. I believe he instead rules with the consensus of a regime inner circle…”
Sure – he’s got an inner circle. But there ain’t no consensus. As far as wielding power – there is KJU and that’s it. No one would ever dare to cross him or question him. Even those in the inner circle live in fear. He had Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol executed for napping at a meeting.
Read the reports attributed to Tae Yong Ho – the diplomat who was assigned to the embassy in London who recently defected – to get an idea of what it’s like being a senior official in North Korea.
And just ask yourself this: who is the #2 guy in North Korea? There isn’t one. No one even begins to rise to the level of the next man up in North Korea. No one would ever want to be the #2 because the second KJU gets the slightest whiff that someone else has gained any power – he kills ’em.
There is KJU – and that’s it.
Looking at the source of the story and the amount of time it to to come out, I am very skeptical.
“The sadistic despot said Iraq had never thought about using WMDs and questioned why “anyone with full faculties” would deploy chemical weapons unprovoked.”
This from the guy that used chemical weapons against his own citizens (Kurds).
@Hot Stuff according to the article Saddam claimed the gassing of the Kurds was not done on his orders. Subordinates below him took the initiative to do that. I do find that hard to believe, but that is what Saddam claimed.
“This from the guy that used chemical weapons against his own citizens”
This was the most irritating phrase ever to come out in any propaganda ever.
It still pops up… “but he blah blah blah against his own citizens.”
Try acting against any government and see how long it takes it to respond against its own citizens.
American history is full of examples where terrible stuff was done “against its own citizens” for nothing more than the possible ability to maybe act against the government in a very small-scale way.
Probably every government throughout time trying to keep benevolent order or malignant control has done something terrible against its own citizens.
Independent of opinions of Kurds or Saddam, trying to make something especially evil of “against his own citizens” in a situation where his “own citizens” were going to war against him is pretty transparent propaganda..
Please… everyone… no longer use “against his own citizens” to try and add another layer of evil on an action that may already be evil… but also may be perfectly justified.