Saddam Hussein in 1957 at the age of 20 to join the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. During this time, Saddam apparently supported himself as a secondary school teacher. Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. In Iraq progressives and socialists assailed traditional political elites (colonial era bureaucrats and landowners, wealthy merchants and tribal chiefs, and monarchists). Moreover, the pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt profoundly influenced young Ba'athists like Saddam. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s
Interrogation of Saddam Hussein Hussein, translated from Arabic to English by the FBI. Some of these quotes were highlighted in secondary source accounts of the reports, including these (grouped by subject in rough chronological order): A number of press reports describe the Iraqi dictator admitting to a catastrophic miscalculation, having misled the United States into believing Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. According to the "Associated Press": "Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran". This interpretation has been