March 27, 2003 6:08 AM

Is this a place anyone really wants to be?

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

Saddam's "characteristic call to Iraqis to 'draw your sword' to defeat 'little, evil Bush' sounded like the recoil of a man just hit by a thunderclap of reality."


It's perhaps a bit early to be predicting the demise of Saddam Hussein, but if you're into reading tea leaves, his future seems dim. It's interesing that someone so skilled at self-preservation may have finally miscalculated.

During nearly 24 years in power, Iraq's strongman never seemed to believe he might face a moment like this. He has always been preternaturally good at dispatching his enemies before they could get to him. And he plans ahead. Beneath the opulent marble palaces from which he has ruled, he built deep concrete bunkers reinforced with steel, stocked with weapons and linked to underground escape tunnels—the architectural metaphor for a dictatorship whose grandiose façade has rested on a foundation of insecurity.

Twenty-fours years of running the brutal political equivalent of a Potemkin village. It really is time for Saddam to go the way of Baby Doc Duvalier and Idi Amin.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 27, 2003 6:08 AM.

A gentleman and a scholar was the previous entry in this blog.

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