Confounded America

Iraq, the US, and the nasty prelude to 2003

AS WELL AS A BRUTE, an idiot, a Jew-hater, and a man capable of nurturing profound cruelty in his own soul as well as those of his sons, Saddam Hussein was occasionally right. He was right often enough to be noticeable, and as Steve Coll makes clear in his new book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003, he w…