Ever since I read Ghost Wars I have enjoyed reading Steve Coll books. When I saw that he wrote a book about the lead up to the Iraqi War I knew I would read it as soon as I could.

Coll wanted to address how America could have been so wrong about the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. When discussing Saddam Hussein Coll notes:
“Successive American presidents misjudged him. They often dismissed him as a cartoon autocrat.”

From the time this book begins in 1979 until its close in 2003 Coll notes:
“One recurring theme is the trouble American decision makers had in assessing Saddam’s resentments and managing his inconsistencies.”

When addressing why Saddam acted the way he did in the building up to the war Coll notes:
“Saddam thought of the CIA as all knowing. This contributed to his own misunderstandings of America which were at least as profound as America’s misunderstandings of him. For instance after 1991 Saddam assumed that the CIA knew that he had no WMD; and so he interpreted American and British accusations about his supposed arsenal of nukes and germ bombs as merely propaganda lines in a long running conspiracy to get rid of him.”

The book does an excellent job of outlining the events that precluded the US invasion in 2003. The major events include the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, the war with Kuwait and the American response, and the Iraqi weapons development program.

There is a lot of information in this book and many interesting facts that will expose the reader to a greater understanding of the relationship between the US and Iraq and of Saddam Hussein. For example he spent his latter years writing novels.

Another interesting fact I learned in this book revolves around the role Vladimir Putin played in trying to avoid the war. Coll writes:
“Early in March Vladimir Putin wrote a letter to Saddam proposing that he step down as president of Iraq and become chairman of the Ba’ath Party. The formulation was clever Putin offered Saddam a face saving outcome that did not require the Iraqi leader to depart his homeland in humiliation.”

Overall I really enjoyed this book and rate it 5 out of 5 stars.