Customer Reviews

Brighter than the Baghdad Sun

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a good book, filled with all manner of allegations involving the Iraqi nuclear program and the infamous "beach ball" device. I only have one problem with it: 90% of it is hearsay. The authors assert that their sources cannot be named - which would be normal in this situation due to reprisal threats - but the authors provide no documentation or footnotes that detail the numerous accusations and re-created dialogues. They make some serious charges against the Clinton Administration, and I suspect they are largely correct; but if one is going to level these kinds of indictments it is necessary to back it up with something other than Saddam's imagined rants. Recommended but keep that grain of salt handy.

I recommend this book as an adjunct to Robert Baer's See No Evil. This book was written in 1999, well before Baer's book. A careful reader will realize that Baer is mentioned but not by name. There is no great political insight contained in this work but for anyone who has been following the UNSCOM fiasco and the general mishandling of Saddam Hussein and his nuclear program, this will connect the dots. Hussein is a thug with absolutely no compunction about killing anyone anytime to pursue his madman's dreams. This book been criticized as being too anecdotal but I believe that is because of the nature of the information. There is no doubt that sources are being protected. If this book doesn't scare you just a little you are either one tough customer or brain dead.

"Brighter than the Baghdad Sun" chronicles Saddam Hussein's 25-year effort to build an atomic bomb, as well as his successful efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

The book also covers in gruesome detail how the Iraqi regime smashes all internal resistance using torture, imprisonment, and assassination. (Although, one sometimes wonders what their sources were for supposed conversations with the Iraqi leadership -- given that most everyone who betrays Saddam ends up dead soon after.)

The drawn out confrontation with the UN weapons inspection teams is detailed as well. That these teams operated for as long as they did is amazing when one sees how the Iraqis were always one step ahead of them (due to a Russian team member who briefed his nation's diplomats, who in turn told Baghdad). In the end, the UN teams left Iraq and Iraq managed to keep some of its nuclear weapons equipment intact.

By the end of this book the reader is convinced that Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing to develop nuclear weapons.

The book falls short of five stars because some of the conversations used to enliven the book are not adequately footnoted (the authors want to protect privacy and lives -- they could have at least characterized the source of the information). There is also some redundancy.

This book was published in 1999 in Britain by two distinguished British journalists, based on the testimony of Iraqi informants, many of whom were in Saddam's inner circle. Particularly painful are the copiously documented failures of the Clinton Administration to deal with the very real nuclear threat Saddam's weapons program posed to the United States and its allies.
Now that political opponents of President Bush hope to persuade the American people that there was never any threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons programs (e.g., contrary to the lying one-star review below, the IAEA never declared Iraq "nuclear-free," but instead stated in its 1998 interim report that it was "prudent to assume" that Iraq had retained prohibited weapons, including material for making nuclear weapons), this book is more topical than ever.

Brighter Than The Baghdad Sun is an eye-opening treatise on Saddam Hussein's police state and reveals just how extensive Iraq's nuclear weapons program really is. Authors Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory also collaborate to show how the Clinton administration's misperception of contemporary Iraq has enabled Saddam to consistently outsmart United Nations and NATO forces, including Saddam's effectively barring UN weapons inspectors since the end of 1998 and the dictator's fast-track efforts to have the first "Arab bomb". Brighter Than The Baghdad Sun is a "must read" for all students of international studies focusing on present day Iraq and the role of the Clinton administration in perpetuating the continuing regional threat and potential global disaster that is Saddam Hussein.

The subtitle, Saddam Hussein's nuclear threat to the U.S., is certainly intriguing and chapters which support this premise are even more enlightening as they explore Hussein's secret race to make a nuclear bomb and tells how the Clinton-Gore administration has allowed it to happen. Hussein's quest to build the 'first Arab bomb' is documented in a title which offers detailed accounts from former members of his inner circle - a frightening expose.

"Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun", is a very scary, well written expose of our failed attempt to "contain" Saddam Hussein. Written with information gathered from Iraqi defectors, this book clearly delineates how close Saddam Hussein came to building a nuclear weapon. But for a lucky delayed bomb from a stealth fighter, Iraq would probably now have built and likely used a nuclear bomb.

Particulary troublesome is the US' lack of intelligence gathering capabilities and the misuse of any intelligence that was gathered concerning Iraq's nuclear capabilities. Intelligence blundering, mismanagement and interference are well displayed.

Most troubling of all is the lack of will of the US to put teeth into UNSCOM's mission to disarm Iraq.

The authors also clearly define the cruelty, barbarism, and sadism rife within the Iraqi regime. Torture, murder, and rape were a daily activity and videotaped for replay. It's astounding what depravity man can inflict on man.

Surely, if Saddam Hussein reads this book, knowing he is still close to making a nuclear device, and knowing the world now knows, a big grin will spread across his face.

This is a terrible book. It is sloppy; for example the Italian nobelist Segre becomes Segra; the authors claim to be experts on uranium separation but in attempting to describe the operation of a calutron they actually describe a centrifuge. The worst offense, however is the intellectually dishonest intermingling of historical facts and pure conjecture on the part of the writers without giving the reader any way of knowing what is what. An obvious example is the statement that Clinton bombed iraq to draw attention away from the Monika Lewinsky scandal. Certainly he did order the bombing; but why he did so neither the authors nor anyone outside that administration know. The mouthing of extremist propaganda is no substitute for good journalism. Unfortunately this level of reporting is repeated over and over again in this volume.

Given that the IAEA declared Iraq nuclear-free in 1998 and thus far nobody has found any evidence that Saddam restarted the program after the inspectors left the country this book is more than ridiculous.
The sensationalist and flatly biased authors ignore the fact that Saddam's nuclear program evolved and almost reached its peak during the Reagan and Bush years but was completely dismantled during Clinton's tenure. Even if Saddam had wanted to nuke the US --which itself is a rather silly allegation-- he never had the means to do it.
If these so-called journalists think they know it better they should present their arguments to the IAEA or to the coalition forces who are now inspecting Iraq. I wonder what they could achieve.
This book is a good read for those who are either paranoid or pathologically anti-Clinton or both but not for those who really want to know what happened to Iraq's nuclear capability during the 90s.