Customer Reviews

Saddam: King of Terror

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is an interesting, timely, informative, helpful work, Like much of the life of Iraq's leader, the exact date and year of Saddam Hussein's birth is arguably unknown. Not surprisingly, a lot of what is known about him is equally vague, subject to revision or argument. Yet the story is worth telling and well worth reading. There is much to be learned. Coughlin cites ancient conflicts, e.g., Persian versus Arabic differences, and shows how Western addiction to and Arab control over oil created the rise of the region as strategic resource. Before that time, there was not much of interest in the region, other than to colonial powers.

Given the reticence of those most knowledgeable of Hussein to speak freely (if they care to live), the absence of good records, and the flattering propaganda produced by his government, writing this book must have been difficult. Few sources on Saddam can be judged to be authoritative. There are very strong biases on each side. The author attempts to introduce and judge competing, even equally unreliable reports of the same event. He does not engage in excessive speculation.

Hussein rose from a feudal, tribal society, where progress, loyalty and consolidating tribal power led to what we'd call inbreeding if not incest, with the marriage of close relatives and sometimes questionable paternity (including Saddam's). He is often labeled a thug; he is ruthless, unforgiving, not well educated early in his life, and sensitive to social class envy. He is a staunch anti-communist who allied himself with the Russians and murdered communist party officers while openly admiring Stalin and running a totalitarian dictatorship. He takes offense easily; he applies punishment quickly.

Foreign powers can be called on account for the instability and a revenge on the West factor in the Arab world. There's the British failures to honor promises to Arabs following World War I, the French government happy to sell Arabs (and Israelis) nuclear power plants and fighter planes, and the German's willing to help Saddam develop nerve gas. Many western countries wanted to recycle the petrodollars they paid for newly expensive oil. Hussein's nationalization of Iraqi oil paid for his rise, increasing state revenues led to a spending spree in early 1980s on weapons, infrastructure, and programs for people. With this, he won the respect and admiration of his people while also engendering fear and domestic terror.

As a military leader he has been a general if not abysmal failure. He miscalculated Iran's staying power under Khomeni. A disastrous war followed. And after Teheran hostage taking, where my enemy's enemy is my friend, Saddam earned American approval and support, including CIA. There is some speculation that CIA started supporting him well before he came to power.

The book offers a good understanding of the region and a reasonably complete understanding of Hussein. For those seeking a justification for or even an understanding of the American stance towards Iraq, more needs to be learned and known. This is a great start towards that public education.

Con Coughlin's book on Saddam is written because the author clearly has something to say about his subject. He doesn't fall into typical trap of citing the most horrific stories told by the natural iraqi storytellers. Still he sees the specific aspects of Iraq, unlike some who equate Saddam with other tyrants of the world in the mood "parallel lives of Saddam and Hitler".

Coughlin's strenght is Saddam's Iraq, which he masters well. As I have lived in Iraq for ten years (1980-1990) I feel I can regognize that. Many who write on Iraq tend to see that Saddam rules purely with the help of satan - like the US cold war propaganda explained the success of communism.
It can not be denied that Saddam's regime is very ruthless. Still it has given something to common iraqis. Coughlin notes the role of nationalizing Iraq's oil in 1972, which made iraqis to accept bath's rule and purge of communist and other elements in the first place.

Coughlin places Saddam well within the clan system of Iraq. Saddam's rule is based on his family and clans attached to it. Coughlin doesn't deal much with islam, which also plays a role. Reason for this may be his lack of capacity. For example he talks in one place about seven pillars of islam (should be five)-in this he may mix with Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Anyway Coughlin makes a very good picture of Iraq's president. Compared to the unbalanced books from beginning of the 1990's, Coughlin has come a long way. I Expect that this book will last the test of time, unlike books rated by some commentators few years back as standard books on Saddam.

This book is hard to read because you don't want to believe someone like Saddam has been left go this long - I must admit that before I read this book I thought we shouldn't go to war but once I started reading all I wanted was for us to rid the world of such a person - I have told everyone I know and some that I didn't how awful Saddam is and how they need to read this book - I think they should hand it out to everyone - No one would be against the war if they knew the truth - Thank you Con Coughlin for setting me straight and I hope that many others read your book and also learn the truth.

"[I]mmediately after the 1968 revolution he [Saddam] had been regarded by many Baathists as the 'weakest link' in the party." Funny, that's just what the Bolsheviks said about Stalin while Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, et al. consolidated power in the Soviet Union. Over the next 5 years Saddam spent his time, in his words, "dealing with the jackals." Like Stalin, he was mightily successful too; for during this period "he had eradicated all his main rivals, be they friend or foe, and had nuetralized the factions hostile to the Baath government, such as the Kurds and the Shiites." This catapulted him into position as the most powerful man in Iraq below President Bakr, having just engineered Iraq's nationalization of foreign oil interests in the country; a gambit made possible by Valery Giscard d'Estaing (then French trade minister, later to become French president) who assured Saddam that France would not join in a threatened Western governmental boycott of future Iraqi oil exports, IF FRENCH INTERESTS WERE NOT HARMED. 3 years later France agrees to sell Iraq a nuclear reactor. Said Saddam publicly at the time: "The agreement with France is the first concrete step toward production of the Arab atomic bomb." Concurrently, at this time Saddam buys Iran off from their support of Kurdish resistance efforts by acknowledging Iran's rights over the Shatt al-Arab waterway separating their two countries. 5 years later, upon the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Saddam renounces this agreement (now that the Kurds have been pacified) and invades Iran on september 22, 1980. Iran, in an initial response, fails in an attempt to bomb Iraq's al Tuwaitha---not yet active---nuclear site; the same site Israel, in june of 1981, successfully hits just days before it was scheduled to go Hot. In 1982, while Israel is taking a pounding from guerillas in Southern Lebanon, Abu Nidal---then headquartered in Iraq---engineers a hit on the Israeli ambassador in London. The assassination attempt fails, but provokes Israel to show strenth & deal with their border by invading Lebanon. Saddam immediately call for a cease-fire with Iran so as to join forces against the greater evil; ie., "Jewish imperialism." To which Ayatollah Khomeini says, if effect, Go fish; dismissing outright the idea of a cease-fire, now that Iran seemingly has the upper hand militarily. Just maybe, people are beginning to think that Iraq may be on the ropes; that a fanatical Islamic Iran just may subdue its much smaller neighbor Iraq. This in quick succession from the American hostage debacle that cost Jimmy Carter his presidency & the mass bombing murder (in early 1983) of U.S. Marines in Beirut on Khomeini's orders. In the context of the time, thus, must be seen President Reagan's sending of Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1984 to guard against a decisive victory by Iran against Iraq. (To all the moralist naysayers, remember that in his efforts to stop Hitler at all costs FDR too aided unsavory Joseph Stalin---who deliberately starved and/or had murdered over 5 million of his own people just previous in the 1930s. U.S efforts in support of Saddam, moreover, were nowhere on such a scale either.) So Saddam fights on until he exhausts Iran; getting his cease-fire (july 1988) after 8 years of war. Virtually bankrupted, with 50% of his oil revenues going to service an $80 Billion! war debt, Saddam instead decides to expropriate Kuwait's wealth & just up and invades it 23 months later. In the cease-fire agreement with U.S.-led UN forces the following year Saddam gives his word to renounce his chemical/biological/nuclear programs and provide a complete accounting for such. Thence 12 years of stonewalling later George W. Bush "rushed to war." How coincidental that "Saddam" in arabic means "the one who confronts"; so, well done Mr. Coughlin, in categorizing such. (05Feb) Cheers!

This book is not a "fun" read it is the detailed biography of a sadomasochistic sociopathic killer who will do anything to gain power and maintain it. Before reading this book, I did not really understand Baathism, or Saddam, or what was really going on. I thought that we wanted the oil, or that George Bush wanted to distract us. After reading this history of one of the most revolting dictators of the last century it is clear he needs to go. Baathism is essentially Naziism. Saddam modeled his tactics on Hitler, Stalin, and Ted Bundy. Saddam is a ruthless sociopathic killer who kills anyone who disagrees with him, argues with him, does a good job and might compete with him, or knows anyone who might cause him a problem. He even kills women who fails to satisfy him sexually. Con Coughlin details his life story and the ruthless pursuit of the obtainment of the Iraq presidency and control of it by Saddam Hussein. This biography is essential to anyone who wants to understand the forces that we face in the next few years. We would be doing the Iraquis a tremendous favour by sending this man to the Hague.

I could not put this book down! It is very detailed and really shows the real Saddam to the reader. Can be very disturbing.

con cauglin answers your questions about saddam in this easy to follow book. before deciding weather we should or should not go to war to change the iraq regime, you should read this book. enough said! Bill Faulk, Topeka, ks.

Some reviewers are judging this book based on their personal opinions about the Iraq War. But this book was originally written in 2002 and the Iraq War is only briefly discussed in a short epilogue. Of course, the situation there is even worse today, though Coughlin does mention the difficulties that lie ahead.

The fact is that this book is not a political treatise. But is instead a well written biography that begins with Saddam's birth around 70 years ago in a small, poverty stricken village near Tikrit. He experienced what was apparently a horrific childhood with an abusive step-father. Around age 10 he was sent off to live with his Nazi sympathizer uncle, Tulfah Khairallah. As a young adult Saddam began to rise through the Baath Party ranks, considered an effective thug and hitman who was willing to do the party's "dirty work" against potential enemies. Eventually Saddam's ruthless brutality enabled him to become the dictator of Iraq. Of course, from there his atrocities only grew worse, including the gassing of the Kurds and over a million left dead during his bloody 8 year war against Iran. Meanwhile the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Germany all supported Iraq with military supplies and assistance during this time, apparently considering him the "lesser of two evils" compared to Iran.

Coughlin does an excellent job in presenting the psychological and cultural background that produced Saddam. Still it remains hard to fathom the type of mentality that could lead someone to order the horrific number of murders and torture cases that occurred during his reign. Saddam was a vicious tyrant. But this book also presents a realistically bleak portrait of Iraq's political environment that offers no easy solutions for a better future without him.

I think Bush and the neo-cons were incredibly naive going into this war believing that they could turn Iraq into a Western style democracy. As a result the situation there is a disaster. But regardless of your political opinions on the war, this is an excellent biography of Saddam that will increase the knowledge of anyone that reads it.

as we watch with bated breath American troops and their Iraqi proxies fight tooth and nail to take the insurgent strong-hold of Fallujah in Iraq so i counsel all who care about what happens in this crucible to read and study carefully this magnificent book by the world's leading expert on Saddam Hussein. First, what this is not. In a new foreword Mr Coughlin admits with admirable honesty how he was taken as a fool by the shadowy people who live in the secret world of the spies. They fed him what he calls lies and he swallowed them as did others in a less exalted position. no excuses there then and now mr Coughlin says he wished he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction. Be that as it might mr Coughlin argues with real logic the West had to take out Saddam. I take issue with him not on the why but the how. surely our own elite forces, aided by the British and others, could have gone in quietly and done for him and his friends and family. had that happened we could have avoided the mess of today. that is only my viwqw it is a small objection to what is a wonderful guide to Iraq. Well done!

This is the book that has explained the images on CNN to me as a teenager and then as an adult, during the two invasions of Iraq. It has also been a source of my support for the war against the leadership of Iraq and not the Iraqi's, despite the questionable weapons of mass destruction. Through Con Coughlin's excellent text, I have realized that this person, who cannot be reached through diplomacy, everyday common-sense reason, the threat of extermination or even basic human sentiment, might quite well be mentally deranged and in denial.

Here the origins of Saddam is summarily written, amazingly without judgement and with impartiality by Con.

If any text seems slanderous to the reader, it's probably because it's the truth and you wish not to accept it.

Thanks Con!