Code – Science – Why did Iraqi soldiers wear Star Wars costumes?

On the 20th anniversary of the Second Gulf War, we recall an episode that would raise its head even in a galaxy far, far away: Saddam Hussein’s presidential unit wore uniforms and helmets like the Dark Jedi, and even closer, Darth Vader.

To trace the origin of the strange uniform, in 1968, Iraq’s democratic system transitioned to a one-party system under the leadership of the Arab Socialist Baath Party led by Saddam Hussein. 1979. The ideology of the Baath Party mixed Arab renaissance, nationalism and socialist economic policy, and above all it created secular states with all-powerful and ruthless dictators (the last representative of the Baath Party, still under Russian rule. Support, Bashar al-Assad of Syria).

As a result of the pressure of the war before his fall, Saddam had already used religious elements in his rhetoric, but US President George W. Even during the war Bush started, it was known that he had nothing to do with the attacks against him. WTC towers or Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It has no nuclear weapons, but is known to carry chemical weapons of mass destruction, and is capable of delivering Soviet-made ballistic missiles to its target. It was also known that he would not hesitate to use nerve gases in the war against Iran, and because he had obtained anthrax and other pathogens that could be used as biological weapons from France and the United States.

Barbarians at the gates

During the Iraq-Iran War, relations between Iran and the United States, which had become a Shiite theocracy following the revolution that broke out some time earlier, deteriorated to the point where it supported Saddam. As an ally, but also as a supporter, he suffered not only biological but also aesthetic destruction.

Saddam Hussein was not only a brutal mass murderer, but also a fan of fantasy, and with his new connections he was able to create a remarkable collection of paintings by Rowena Morrill, Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. These were widely known works of the day, in which flamboyant barbarians, scantily clad barbarian women and dragons wrestled each other. In our country, they mostly appeared on the covers of books and newspapers, but in America they were mostly used on the sides of light trucks, which is why they were known as van paintings.

Saddam’s excellent taste had a great influence on his children as well. Along with his father, his first son Udaj Hussain was also a huge Star Wars fan. When the dictator suspected that his army might be preparing a coup against him in the mid-nineties, he created a paramilitary organization called Fedayeen Saddam. The outlaw presidential army was led by Udaj, who consciously decided to increase the charismatic influence of his militia by adopting the black turban and helmet of Darth Vader. Although the latter has a much smaller military advantage, this is not a problem, because a corps of 30-40 thousand men

Here, women believed to be adulterers (or previously forced to do so by them) were produced and executed on the orders of the utterly insane and psychotic Udaj, not the genocidal actions of the Dark Lord.

The helmet is some kind of layered resin-fiberglass construction that can only protect the wearer against an air gun. The Americans who occupied the country found it amusing and sent them home en masse. Today, collectors pay upwards of a thousand dollars for one of these, and even pass them off as fakes.

Arresting a militant – I am not your father

Photo: YouTube

But where did Darth Vader come from?

The Sith Knight costume is a veritable collection of print designs. George Lucas wanted the main villain of his cinema to be surrounded by an instantly recognizable dark light. Scenic designer Ralph McQuarrie demonstrated this with a dark costume and death’s head-gas mask transformation, which struck Lucas so much that he changed Vader’s background slightly. Vader first needed a mask so he could be evil while jumping from spaceship to spaceship – thus came the fight with Kenobi, the volcanic fallout and the permanent mask.

Costume designer John Mollo designed black leather boots, a motorcycle jacket and, above all, a helmet,

To conclude the wonderful and depressing story: Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, died in a firefight during the Gulf War in 2003, and the dictator himself was captured and executed in 2006. Most of the wonderful paintings went to Japanese collectors. Darth Vader’s original helmet was scratched by a gang of children playing in the Australian outback and was only recently rediscovered.

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