The most heartening single image of the past month—eclipsing even the bravery and dignity of the civilian fighters against despotism in Syria and Libya—was the sight of Hoshyar Zebari arriving in Paris to call for strong action against the depraved regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi. Here was the foreign minister of Iraq, and the new head of the Arab League, helping to tilt the whole axis of local diplomacy against one-man rule. In May, Iraq will act as host to the Arab League summit, and it will be distinctly amusing and highly instructive to see which Arab leaders have the courage, or even the ability, to leave their own capitals and attend. The whole scene is especially gratifying for those of us who remember Zebari as the dedicated exile militant that he was 10 years ago, striving to defend his dispossessed people from the effects of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons.

...

As it is, to have had Iraq on the other scale from the outset has been an unnoticed and unacknowledged benefit whose extent is impossible to compute. And the influence of Iraq on the Libyan equation has also been uniformly positive in ways that are likewise often overlooked.

...

Hoshyar Zebari happily cited as precedent the no-fly zone that for a long time protected northern and southern Iraq from Saddam Hussein's helicopter gunships. But he knows perfectly well that the logic of this is inexorable. Every day, Saddam's ground forces fired on those planes. Every day, the post-Kuwait cease-fire agreement became more frayed and breached. Every day, it became plainer that Iraq was the miserable hostage to the whims of a single tyrant.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY


So, how much of an effect does and did the nascent democracy of Iraq have on the initiation of the current unrest in the Middle East? 

Will it play out with much real change, or will the religious fanatics hijack the movement to more open societies? 

Why, or why not?

Firm

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
So, how much of an effect does and did the nascent democracy of Iraq have on the initiation of the current unrest in the Middle East? 

Will it play out with much real change, or will the religious fanatics hijack the movement to more open societies? 

Why, or why not?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Louve00



  Iraq never revolted against Saddam.  We did! LOL 

quote:

ORIGINAL: rulemylife


It was Bush who negotiated this settlement.

quote:

ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

You do understand that is the point of the article/OP, right?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Louve00

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY


So, how much of an effect does and did the nascent democracy of Iraq have on the initiation of the current unrest in the Middle East? 

Will it play out with much real change, or will the religious fanatics hijack the movement to more open societies? 

Why, or why not?

Firm

Iraq never revolted against Saddam.  We did! LOL.

The 1991 uprisings in Iraq were a series of anti-governmental rebellions in southern and northern Iraq during the aftermath of the Gulf War. The revolt was fueled by the perception that the power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was vulnerable at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression and the devastation wrought by two wars in a decade, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. United States also played a role in encouraging the uprisings, which were then controversially not aided by the U.S. forces present on Iraqi soil.

...

Although they presented a serious threat to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime, Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives. In the aftermath, the government intensified the forced relocating of Marsh Arabs and the draining of the Iraqi marshlands, while the Allies established the Iraqi no-fly zones.

quote:

ORIGINAL: flcouple2009

Funny, 

You left out these bits


On February 15, 1991, President of the United States George H. W. Bush announced on the Voice of America radio saying: “ "There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations." ” On the evening of February 24, several days before the Gulf War ceasefire was signed in Safwan, the Saudi Arabia-based Voice of Free Iraq radio station, funded and operated by the CIA, broadcasted a message to the Iraqis telling them to rise up and overthrow Saddam.[1] The speaker on the radio was Salah Omar al-Ali, a former member of the Ba'ath Party and the ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Al-Ali's message urged the Iraqis to overthrow the "criminal tyrant of Iraq":

"United States also played a role in encouraging the uprisings, which were then controversially not aided by the U.S. forces present on Iraqi soil."

quote:

ORIGINAL: flcouple2009

I'm not cleaning up anything,  it is a direct quote form the article.

You do not like the quote because it contradicts your silliness.  The people rose up because we called for it and encouraged them. 

Then if you do remember

We stood by and watched them crushed.  There is much truth to Louves post that we were the ones who revolted and not the people of Iraq.