18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
from publishers weekly, October 19, 2000
from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, October 16, 2000*:
"[The authors] keen sense of pacing (balancing personal memoir with political history) and clear and vivid writing serve to indict Iraq under Saddam, painting a detailed and convincing portrait of what it's like to live in a country under a violent dictator where there is no viable opposition or independent judiciary. . .
Hamza recalls colleagues who were tortured and killed, and doctors weeping as they told him of being forced to watch the killings of Shiites, who Saddam feared politically, or the gassing of Kurds, designed both to eliminate this minority and to test biological weapons. . .
Forecast: Hamza was featured in an article in the New York Times Magazine on Oct. 2 and this book will get widely reviewed. Hamza's urgent message about how close Saddam is to completing a nuclear weapon makes the book not only newsworthy but of the broadest interest to a wide spectrum of readers concerned about the fate of the world in the nuclear age
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling, December 30, 2002
By A Customer
Before going into my own thoughts on this book, I would like to respond to an earlier reviewer who found this an obviously fictional account because:
"Basically, in atomic research you need lots of industrial equipment, like the South African and Israeli governments bought or developed(from other advanced nations). Iraq has nothing close to this."
To this I say: North Korea, Pakistan, India (and coming soon, Iran) -- and ??? In this I do not mean to disparage the countries named, but they clearly do not fall within that reviewers idea of a highly developed industrialized "Big 5" nation. What Iraq was not able to develop on its own, it WAS able to buy.
And that last is really one of the main themes of this book. The ability of Iraq to buy, and the willingness of others to sell, everything that Iraq needs -- for a price. This brought to mind Bernard Lewis's accounts in "Islam and the West" in which the West was more than willing to sell modern arms to Islamic states in the distant past. But I digress.
Dr. Hamzah portrays/is portrayed as a man caught up in a combination of greed, ego, and fear. He was finally able to extricate himself and his family (and his accounts of his difficulties dealing with the CIA do not bode well for the future). His description of how easily he was ensnared in this gilded cage, one step at a time, is truly a cautionary tale.
At the same time, his detailed description of how a rogue state can go about obtaining the necessary ingredients for a nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction) weapon is dismaying to say the least. But at least it takes a LOT of money.
The one element that did not ring true (for me)was Dr. Hamza's description of his poker playing. He clearly knows very little about poker, and writing of his exploits as someone who does (even marginally) gave me pause. But it is more along the lines of grandiosity than outright fabrication. And that is perhaps the best way to approach this book. Accept that Dr. Hamza (for various reasons) puffs himself up a bit -- but that is also what made him more susceptible to Saddam's enticements
Well worth reading if you want to understand how Iraq could get a weapons program going, and maintain it in secrecy despite attempts to uncover it. Also a worthwhile study of how a man can slowly slip into a bad situation through greed, and hubris.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A small point of clarification...., October 17, 2006
This review is from: Saddam's Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq's Secret Weapon (Paperback)
Convinced he had discovered that Iraq was only ` a few inches' away from finishing a successful production of the `Bomb', the author suddenly summoned undocumented story about 1) his contribution to the `bomb's project' from initial stages, and another 2) by alluding to IBM not able to sell Iraq up to date technology.
On page 141 he refers to IBM "couldn't sell us their new mainframe because of the export controls."
The truth of the matter is that the Arab Boycott Office had narrated a statement, called the `negative' (or Nasty) clause, to the effect that `carriers and ships carrying goods destined to and/or from the Arab Countries, should NOT pass through or deal with Israeli ports".
The Boycott Clause (stereotyped as is) was to be mentioned on the Bills of Lading and on all related shipping documents.
IBM had to comply with the USA anti Boycott regulations that did not accept such `negative' statements.
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