The tragic tale of Saddam Hussein's 'supergun'

In the 1980's, western governments were working to keep missile technology out of the middle east. Many of the generals and politicians in the middle east did not have a good understanding of missiles. They knew guns very well. Even while fighting Iran, Saddam Hussein said that he wanted to bombard Israel. Despotic dictators wanted Israel gone as much as religious extremists. He intended this gun for that purpose. If the designer wasn't killed, then they would have had to bomb the gun's location. Israel had a great deal of motivation for the assassination.

We supported Iraq in the Iran - Iraq war. Iraq was seen to be the weaker of the two. Senior military people had hoped that the two countries would have destroyed each other. The Iran hostage crisis was still fresh in the minds of Americans as well. We just wanted to try to keep advanced weapons out of the middle east. Our aid helped Saddam with less sophisticated weapons. They allowed Iraq to fight the war to a stand still. Still, a few advanced missiles made their way into the war through China and Russia. Both the USS Stark and a merchant ship were hit by missiles during this war.

Saddam wanted big guns as they provoked the most fear in the middle east at the time. This was one of the reasons President Regan wanted the battleships back in service. He knew that the middle east was a powder keg that could spark into a regional war with very little provocation. He wanted to devote his efforts against the Soviet Union, more than the middle east. With the battleships having the largest guns in existence at the time, he knew that middle eastern leaders would fear them. Battleships made many trips to the middle east. Saudi Royalty and other middle eastern dignitaries were allowed aboard and allowed to fire the big guns from the gun directors platform. When middle eastern countries took any action against American interests, President Regan ordered swift retaliation. It was a big reason that the middle east as a whole was pretty calm during that period.

As bad as Saddam was, I agree that it was a mistake to take him out as well as the other dictators that we did during the "Arab Spring." We had no concerted plan to put a government into place and failed to recognize the radicals that would step up. From what I can tell in these actions, we were just winging it as far as putting stable governments into place. We may have destroyed a lot of chemical weapons. Now the radicals have more time to devote to attacking western Europe and us.

Interesting article.

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel It's interesting that it's creator moved to Brussels, Belgium after separately being jailed for 6 months and fined $55,000. While there he began working for the Iraqi government (Iran Iraq War) when Iraq and Saddam wasn't considered a threat. This is an interesting read. Thank you for posting it.