Inside Saddam Hussein's Head
Other dictators have known when to flee. Why did the Iraqi ruler decide to stand his ground?

During nearly 24 years in power, Saddam Hussein never seemed to believe he might face a moment like this. He has always been remarkably good at dispatching his enemies before they could get to him. From the day Saddam at age 20 launched his career as a gunman for the nationalist Baath Party, he knew what it meant to be in an enemy's cross hairs. "He killed lots of people to get to the top," says Con Coughlin, author of a recent Saddam biography, all the while knowing that "they could get to the top by killing him." Bush himself has recently been watching a notorious videotape made in 1979 that suggests Saddam personally orchestrated the execution en masse of close party colleagues who had just helped him into the presidency.

Saddam expected unconditional subservience from his inner circle. As a result, he came to live in hothouse isolation, in limited contact with any ideas but his own. Except for 3 1/2 years in Egypt, to which he fled in 1960 after a failed assassination attempt on his life, and brief visits abroad in the early 1980s, he knew little of the world outside Iraq. During a 1990 interview, Saddam expressed amazement that the U.S. had no laws to jail people who insulted the American President–as Iraq does.

That may well account for Saddam's history of disastrous miscalculations, especially in war. In 1980 he saw the revolutionary confusion inside Iran as a golden opportunity. No military expert, yet commander in chief, he thought a quick strike by his superior forces could snatch back some disputed territory from Iran. But his army failed to break Ayatullah Khomeini's revolutionary forces for eight years. When Khomeini's death finally let Saddam have a cease-fire in 1988, he declared it a great victory.

A mere two years later, Saddam invaded oil-rich Kuwait as a quick way to finance the rebuilding of his war-shattered country. He subsequently misread almost every move the U.S. made in response, starting with his calculation that the first President Bush was not serious about kicking him out of Kuwait. When, as the Allies ripped through Iraq, a general finally told Saddam that his army was being destroyed, he replied coldly, "That is your opinion." But he proved right in one crucial calculation: if he could ride out the storm, he could rebound.

Even in choosing to fight the U.S. a second time, Saddam may have sensed an opportunity for survival. He apparently was convinced, just as he had been a decade ago, that the U.S. could not stomach casualties, so his strategy was the same–betting that a heavy body count would drive Western public opinion to demand a cease-fire.

This time around, there has been far less scope for miscalculation. The younger President Bush has been nothing if not clear about his intention to get rid of Saddam. The dream in Washington was that once Iraq's leader was convinced of certain defeat, he would depart to stay alive. But the experts generally believe that for Saddam, power is everything and death is a better alternative than losing it. Any other outcome, says Phebe Marr, a former Pentagon consultant and author of a book on Iraq, would destroy the monumental myth Saddam has spent his life creating. "His legacy," says Marr, "would disappear."

—from TIME, March 31, 2003

Questions

1. What are the reasons for the "history of disastrous miscalculations" in Saddam's war plans?

2. Why do you think Saddam did not agree to give up power and go into exile?