Title: Saddam Hussein
Content: Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (; Arabic: ""; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization the Iraqi Ba'ath Party—which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and socialism—Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq. As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time

Title: Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Content: and elderly al-Bakr became unable to execute his duties, Saddam took on an increasingly prominent role as the face of the government both internally and externally, eventually becoming de facto leader of Iraq some years before he formally became president. On July 16, 1979, the 65-year-old Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr stepped down, ostensibly on health grounds, and Saddam assumed the presidency in a move that was widely regarded as a formality. It is commonly believed, based on accounts of witnesses, that Saddam forced the president to step down under threat of being removed by force. Immediately thereafter, Saddam had several top

Title: Interrogation of Saddam Hussein
Content: became President, and Saddam became his deputy. In 1979, Saddam Hussein displaced General Bakr, and a little more than a year later, he ordered Iraqi troops to invade Iran, starting the Iran–Iraq War that would continue until 1988. Iraq's 1990 Invasion of Kuwait led to the 1991 Gulf War. In 1998, Saddam halted Iraqi cooperation with the United Nations Special Commission weapons inspections imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War, and kept U.N. inspectors out until 2002. In March 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq that quickly toppled the government. Saddam fled the capital of Baghdad shortly

Title: Saddam Hussein
Content: be 250,000. Saddam's invasions of Iran and Kuwait also resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. He acquired the title "Butcher of Baghdad". In 2003, a coalition led by the United States invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, in which United States President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair falsely accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda. Saddam's Ba'ath party was disbanded and elections were held. Following his capture on 13 December 2003, the trial of Saddam took place under the Iraqi Interim Government. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted by

Title: Military history of Iraq
Content: Israel. Saddam Hussein came to power as President of Iraq in 1979. Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, in the Iran–Iraq War and with some initial successes, eventually the war dragged on into a long stalemate, with between 1 and 2 million casualties. The war ended with a ceasefire on August 20, 1988. On June 7, 1981, Israeli F-15s and F-16s bombed and destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor, south of Baghdad following the orders of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. On May 17, 1987, an Iraqi Mirage fighter fired two Exocet missiles at the American ship USS Stark (FFG-31),

Question: In what year did Saddam Hussein become President of Iraq?
Answer: 1979