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

by Elaine Sciolino

Book Overview

An analysis of the Gulf War and its long-ranging effects in the Middle East, which explores Saddam Hussein's rise to power, explains why he invaded Kuwait, provides a survey of the war's outcome and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471542997
• ISBN13: 9780471542995
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Brief, Revealing Journey Into The Heart of Darkness

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 n