The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis [Hardcover]

Elaine Sciolino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1991

The shooting war is over in the Persian Gulf. However, the war of words about it is only now beginning. Elaine Sciolino, who has covered the Middle East during the past decade for ``The New York Times'', fires the opening salvo in an effort to explain and analyze how the war came about. She first warned us about Saddam Hussein in 1985 in an article for The New York Times Magazine. Now she tells us how Saddam came to power; why he invaded Kuwait, what effects the war's outcome will have; and what happens to the region's balance of power with Saddam's army destroyed.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sciolino, the diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times , demonstrates a keen eye for interpreting events in today's Iraq. Her easy-to-follow account of Saddam Hussein's rise to power and the events that led to the Persian Gulf War is strengthened by her on-the-scene reporting and material gathered through interviews with a host of Iraqi, American, and Middle Eastern key players. In addition to chronicling the war and its aftermath, Sciolino also illustrates how the West before the war helped Iraq build its vast military machine. Unfortunately, her book is replete with what seems to be the obligatory Iraq-bashing hyperbolic statements that characterize many of the recently published books on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Despite this weakness, it is recommended for public and academic library collections. Previewed in "The Gulf War in Print," LJ 3/15/91.--Ed.
-Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, Ala.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

The shooting war is over in the Persian Gulf. However, the war of words about it is only now beginning. Elaine Sciolino, who has covered the Middle East during the past decade for ``The New York Times'', fires the opening salvo in an effort to explain and analyze how the war came about. She first warned us about Saddam Hussein in 1985 in an article for The New York Times Magazine. Now she tells us how Saddam came to power; why he invaded Kuwait, what effects the war's outcome will have; and what happens to the region's balance of power with Saddam's army destroyed.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471542997
• ISBN-13: 978-0471542995
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,834,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elaine Sciolino is a Paris correspondent and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, having previously served as the newspaper's chief diplomatic correspondent and United Nations bureau chief. She is the author of the award-winning Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran and The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis. Her new book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, was published by Henry Holt /Times Books in June 2011. In 2010, she was decorated a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. She lives in Paris with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A Brief, Revealing Journey Into The Heart of Darkness, March 26, 2003

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J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis (Hardcover)

Elaine Sciolino has an excellent reporter's eye. OUTLAW STATE is this New York Times Diplomatic Correspondent's view through a glass darkly into the heart of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Written just after the First Gulf War, it could serve as a primer on just why there is a Second Gulf War. Considering that this book contains valuable information regarding the true nature of Hussein's regime, OUTLAW STATE is well worth a serious review.

The Iraq Sciolino visited was a Stalinist state with an Emperor-Worship cult that Djugashvili would be proud of. The two keywords of Iraqi life were "fear" and "forbidden." Saddam is a documented madman who has gassed his own population, chopped dissenters (real and imagined) literally into pieces, and made war with his neighbors for no reason whatsoever except paranoia and megalomania.

Believing himself to be the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar and a relative of Saladin (born in Saddam's home village of Tikrit), Saddam was reputed to see himself in messianic terms as the ruler of a greater Arab empire or a new Caliphate. Saddam insisted on creating ersatz Mesopotamian ruins (complete with "prophecies" proclaiming his own eventual appearance on the world stage) and forcing children to mindlessly recite Baath Party dictums (one is reprinted here, comically mangled by a little girl who mentions the "national I forgot"). While squandering Iraqi oil money on showy palaces and the pleasures of the flesh, most Iraqis today are impoverished as a result of his personal greed.

Scolino gives example after example of the Iraqi leader's unbalanced world view, from the public beating of Embassy personnel to the private executions Saddam seemed to thrive on. Certainly, OUTLAW STATE is a moral justification for his overthrow, without the inflated threat of WMD.

Never having learned the Arabist-mercantile approach of the bazaar, Scolino related that Saddam relied on brute force to coerce what he wanted from whom he wanted it. When he bragged to fellow dictator Assad of Syria that he could "destroy America and Israel in one blow" Assad's response was "You're crazy. If you've never fought the Israelis you know nothing about military might." Never mind the Americans, Assad seemed to add.

Scolino does point up a few positives: Until the Iran-Iraq War, the necessities of life and luxury consumer goods were readily available. Ordinary Iraqis were treated to an array of "perks" unheard of in the West, all based on oil money. Free automobiles (with free gasoline)and immense periodic cash disbursements were as common as free health care and education.

Saddam, to his credit, reveled in building an ultramodern Iraq with a cutting-edge infrastructure. Although the populace prospered in the early years of the regime, Saddam's fixation on war and on maintaining his police state eroded and finally undid his utopian visions of a modern Iraq. The US-led UN sanctions were merely the endgame in a long cycle of collapse. Iraq's citizenry has nothing now but dreams and terror.

OUTLAW STATE is frightening. A reader can imagine that the reportage is slanted (Iraqis are portrayed as characteristically dour and reserved, unusual traits for the usually hospitable Arab people) but perhaps that is the slant. There seemed to be little good to report in this oil-rich nation-state concentration camp under Saddam. Sadly, not much has changed.