An account of the forces - historical, religious, ethnic, and political - that produced Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Iraq was forged after WW1 from the Medopotamian region of the collapsed Ottoman Empire; its people have never had a national identity or a sense of common purpose. Hussein, ruling by terror, pitted the various ethnic groups, religious interests, and tribes against one another, and in so doing achieved the destruction of Iraq's middle class and civilized society...