Today’s New York Times holds two obituaries that bookend the highs and lows of Saddam Hussein.
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was president of Iran when Hussein invaded, “setting off the horrific Iran-Iraq war”.
Mr. Bani-Sadr was president when the newborn Islamic Republic went through two of its greatest traumas. Militants stormed the United States embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. Ten months later, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Iran, setting off the horrific Iran-Iraq war.
Gen. Raymond T. Odierno was “an influential architect of the surge of American forces during the Iraq war”
After U.S. Special Operations forces dragged the disheveled and heavily bearded Iraqi dictator from an underground hide-out on a sheep farm north of Baghdad, the general uttered one of the war’s most notable comments.
“He was in the bottom of a hole with no way to fight back,” General Odierno said. “He was caught like a rat.”