Saddam Hussein
In my opinion the most significant person in the last year was, and still is, Saddam Hussein. This man was a born poor boy in a mud hut village in 1937, but in 1979 he seized power of Iraq and began to squander oil. From 1980-1988 the U.S. military supported Saddam during a bloodbath with Iran.
The difficulty with Saddam started in the late 1990's when he refused to comply with United Nations inspections teams to ensure that all nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons had been destroyed. He then again refused United Nation Inspectors in December of 1998. …