Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini and that

Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini and that’s when Khomeini went to Paris and was able to rally and successfully oust the shah.

The Persians in Iran didn’t like the United States because the United States was backing the corrupt and brutal regime of the shah in Iran. This leads right into the Iran-Iraq war which began after Khomeini assumed power in Iran, after the shah was ousted by Islamic fundamentalists.

That’s right. You see the Ba’ath Party of Iraq is a secular party. It believes in the separation of state and religion.

So the Shiite Muslims in Iran, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, wanted a Muslim religious state like Khomeini brought to Iran. In fact, Khomeini wanted an Islamic republic composed of all of the Islamic states and eventually a world government.

But to have that, Khomeini needed to conquer not only Iraq but also Mecca and Medina which are sites in Saudi Arabia that are holy to all Muslims—both Shiites and Sunnis. He had to go through Iraq, which is the only Arab country with a land border with Saudi Arabia. So Khomeini was calling on the radio for the Shiite soldiers in Iraq to defect and assassinate Saddam. The Shiites are more than 50 percent of the Islamic population in Iraq. There were assassination attempts.

Saddam believed that even though Iran had more than three times the manpower of Iraq and far greater strategic depth, he figured he could do a preemptive strike against Iran, since there were sanctions on Iran and the country couldn’t get spare parts.

Saddam calculated that would stop Iran from invading Iraq and the rest of the Arab world.

Saddam, who portrayed all this as a violation of Iraq's territorial sovereignty, became less cooperative and more obstructive of UNSCOM activities as the years wore on, and refused access for several years beginning in August 1998. Ultimately Saddam condemned the US for enforcing the sanctions through the UN and demanded nothing less than unconditional lifting of all sanctions on its country, including the weapons sanctions. The US and UN refused to do so out of concern that Saddam's regime would rebuild its once-powerful military and renew its WMD programs with the trade revenues. Renewed pressure in 2002 led to the entry of UNMOVIC, which received some degree of cooperation but failed to declare Iraq's disarmament immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which it was withdrawn and became inactive in Iraq.

The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UNSC, after approximately 1.5 million people had died.Resolution 1483. [14]

"They" *used* to say, behind every good man, there was a good woman. There is probably a less sexist version of that today.

This story seems so disingenuous to me. Pass yourself off as an independent female, then once your spouse is prime minister say that you are Mrs. Harper instead of keeping the name you claimed to have for so long.

Timing, and optics, are everything in politics. This reeks. Tesky Tesin (Czeck Republic) is a German Jewish name - Czeck Jewish

Laureen : Just call me 'Mrs. Harper'

OTTAWA (CP) — Mrs. Harper goes to Ottawa.

The wife of incoming prime minister Stephen Harper has been known by a variety of names since arriving in the capital but has settled on just one.

Not since 1979, when Conservative Joe Clark became prime minister, has there been so much talk about how to address the spouse of the first minister.

Clark’s wife, Maureen, held on to her maiden name of McTeer, which was unusual almost 30 years ago and set tongues a-wagging in the capital.

Harper’s 41-year-old spouse has been known as Laureen Teskey — the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com refers to Stephen Harper and Laureen Teskey being married in 199

During the election campaign, Conservative Party news releases sometimes referred to her as Laureen Harper.

Then, just to make things even more confusing, Thursday’s Ottawa Citizen featured a front page photo of the prime minister designate with a kitten. The photo was credited to Laureen Teskey Harper, no hyphen.

But the self-described small-town girl from Turner Valley, Alta., has let it be quietly known that she now goes only by the name of Laureen Harper.

Teskey is a family name that can be found in many countries of the English-speaking world. Around 80% to 90% of the Teskeys in the world today are descended from the “Irish Palatine” family of that name, founded by the man now referred to as Jacob Teskey, or Jacob 1659 (after his apparent year of birth). The term “Irish Palatine” was given to families that left the German Pfalz (also known as the Southern or Rhenish Palatinate) in 1709 and eventually settled in Ireland. Around 100 of these German-speaking families settled on the Southwell estate near Rathkeale in County Limerick. Amongst them was Jacob, with his wife and two sons.

The Teskey spelling first appeared in Ireland a few years after 1709. There has been much conjecture as to the original spelling before the family migrated to Ireland, and indeed much speculation about their specific place of origin. During their arduous and eventful migration the family was recorded as Feske in Rotterdam and Teske in London. After settling in Ireland they were recorded as Teshine in 1715, but soon afterwards the name seemed to become settled as Teskey.

In 2004 Hank Jones, a leading researcher into Irish Palatine family history, put forward a strong argument that before 1709 the family lived in a village called Osthofen, one mile from the west bank of the River Rhine and five miles north of the city of Worms. There, the 'founder' Teskey, Jacob 1659, was recorded as Jacob Tesch. This theory is based on somewhat circumstantial evidence, but all other theories have been purely conjecture.

During the great Irish migrations, especially from around 1840 until the early 1900s, several members of this Irish Palatine branch of the Teskey family emigrated to Canada, the northeastern United States, England and Australia. The migration continued later to many parts of the world. Today the greatest concentration of Teskeys is in Toronto, Canada. However, there are still Teskeys, descendants of the first Teskey family, living and farming in the area of the original Palatine settlements near Rathkeale, Co. Limerick.

In the 1800s a branch of the family moved from Rathkeale to nearby Adare, where they were recorded as Tuskey. The Irish who migrated to North America in the 1800s included both Teskeys and the related Tuskeys. Today both spellings can be found in Canada and the USA. Research into people with the name Tuskey might conclude that they too are mostly descended from Jacob 1659 Teskey.

In addition to the major group of related Teskeys, there are other families bearing the name, mostly in Canada and the USA. These are the descendants from a number of immigrants who did not come from Ireland. They include at least two families who came directly from Germany with the name Teske and another originally called Teschke. A family from Russia was originally Tesske, whilst the families Tzrebietowski, Tyski and Tutzke came originally from Poland. A Tutefski emigrated from Romania and the origin of the Titieskey branch remains a mystery. All are known to have changed their name to Teskey either upon immigration or shortly afterwards. The largest of these non-Irish Teskey families comprises descendants of Stephen 1815 and Johanna, who came from Prussia and settled with their family in Collingwood, Ontario some time before the 1871 Census. Then their name was recorded as Teske; in the 1881 census it was Tesky; and by the 20th century it had become established as Teskey.