The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein is high on America's enemies list. Does an Iraq without him hold the seeds of the next Yugoslavia? To the dismay of many in the West, the first Gulf War ended with him still in control, still defiant & determined to use any means of striking back. This book sounds an urgent note of caution: a future Iraq without Hussein could be even more unstable & more problematical to the security of the USA. The Reckoningis an account of the historical, religious, ethnic & political forces that produced his dictatorship. Forged after WWI from the Mesopotamian region of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, Iraq's people have never had a national identity or a sense of common purpose. Hussein, ruling by terror rather than persuasion, has pitted the various ethnic groups, religious interests & tribes against each other & in so doing achieved the destruction of Iraq's middle class & civilized society. After he goes, however he goes, the country could be the site of conflict even more vicious than the Balkan wars.