A report on Ba'athist Iraq, Iran–Iraq War and Gulf War

He suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements which sought to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively, and maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War.

In the course of his reign, the Ba'athist regime officially included the historic Kurdish Muslim leader Saladin as a patriotic symbol in Iraq, while Saddam called himself son of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and had stamped the bricks of ancient Babylon with his name and titles next to him.

Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003.

In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking a protracted war which would last for almost eight years, and end in a stalemate with devastating losses for both countries.

This subsequently led to military intervention by United States-led forces in the First Gulf War.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was an operation conducted by Iraq on 2 August 1990, whereby it invaded the neighboring State of Kuwait, consequently resulting in a seven-month-long Iraqi military occupation of the country.

These events came to be known as the first Gulf War, eventually resulting in the forced expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and the Iraqis setting 600 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire during their retreat (see scorched earth strategy).

A variety of speculations have been made regarding the true intents behind the Iraqi move, including Iraq's inability to pay Kuwait more than US$14 billion that it had borrowed from Kuwait to finance the Iran–Iraq War, and Kuwait's surge in petroleum production levels which kept revenues down for Iraq.

The sanctions against Iraq were a comprehensive financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iraq.

In April 1991, following Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, Resolution 687 lifted the prohibition on foodstuffs, but sanctions remained in effect with revisions, including linkage to removal of weapons of mass destruction.

The Reagan administration generally supported Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, despite Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons against post-revolutionary Iran.

In 1990, after oil production disputes with neighbouring Iraq, Kuwait was invaded, and later annexed into one of Iraq's governorates by Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait came to an end on February 26,1991 after military intervention by a military coalition led by the United States and various other countries.

During the Iran–Iraq War, Kuwait supported Iraq.

A much larger conflict was the Iran–Iraq War, initiated by the Iraqis in 1980, which continued until 1988.

Thereafter Iraq began the invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991, which led in turn to confrontations over the Iraqi no-fly zones during the 1990s, and finally the Iraq War of 2003.

The Iran–Iraq War (حرب الخليج الأولى, الحرب الإيرانية العراقية) was a protracted armed conflict that began on 22 September 1980 when Iraq invaded neighbouring Iran.

American support for Ba'athist Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, in which it fought against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, military intelligence, and special operations training.

Even before the Persian Gulf War started in 1990, the Intelligencer Journal of Pennsylvania in a string of articles reported: "If U.S. and Iraqi troops engage in combat in the Persian Gulf, weapons technology developed in Lancaster and indirectly sold to Iraq will probably be used against U.S. forces ... And aiding in this ... technology transfer was the Iraqi-owned, British-based precision tooling firm Matrix Churchill, whose U.S. operations in Ohio were recently linked to a sophisticated Iraqi weapons procurement network."

During the Iran–Iraq War, it was expanded into a large military force.

In the television show Lost, one of the main characters - Sayid Jarrah - served in the Republican Guard during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During his service, he was a soldier, a communications officer and an interrogator. The majority of his background story revolves around the guilt he has felt towards people he's tortured in the past.

The video game, Conflict: Desert Storm series feature soldiers of the Ba'athist Iraqi Republican Guard as the main enemies.