The Achilles Trap
Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
(Sprache: Englisch)
"From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news breaking investigation into how human error, cultural...
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"From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the greatest geopolitical conflicts of our time When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction which, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the US and its allies were forced to consider that their political and intelligence failures had led to one of the most disastrous conflicts of our time. And a more integral question remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the impression that he possessed hidden stocks of dangerous weapons? The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq, and, for the first time, dramatizes America's fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader-a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp integral nuances of his paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly high. Calling on unpublished and under-reported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam's
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own transcripts and audio files, many of which have never been made public, Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him, and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it"--
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Lese-Probe zu „The Achilles Trap “
IntroductionIn October 2003, seven months after the American- led invasion of Iraq, I traveled to Baghdad on assignment for The Washington Post. Saddam Hussein was by then a fugitive in hiding. Occasional car bombs rattled the capital, a prelude of much worse to come. One afternoon, at a fortified compound near the Republican Palace, I met Hamish Killip, a British investigator with the Iraq Survey Group, a C.I.A.- sponsored multinational task force dispatched at the onset of the invasion to find Saddam s hidden stocks of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. By now it was apparent that Iraq possessed no such weapons. The shock of this revelation had already touched off investigations into the profound failures of U.S. intelligence and White House decision- making. In Iraq, the Survey Group s mission had unexpectedly changed from hunting for weapons to sorting truth from lies in the history of the Saddam Hussein regime.
One set of questions involved Saddam s motivations. Why had he seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the impression that he had dangerous weapons when, in fact, he had none? Or as Killip put it that afternoon, addressing Saddam: What was so damned important that you were willing to go through all of this?
Across town, I met David Kay, the Survey Group s leader. He was exploring a theory that Saddam had been bluffing pretending that he might have WMD in order to deter the radical ayatollahs of Iran from attacking Iraq. And yet the matter seemed uncertain, Kay told me,since Saddam did not appear to have been particularly afraid of Iran.When one of his ministers had worried aloud that Iran might pursue its own nuclear or chemical arsenal, Saddam had reportedly replied, Don t worry about the Iranians. If they ever get WMD, the Americans and the Israelis will destroy them.
This was vintage Saddam, I now recognize half joking, capable of striking prescience, reliably fixated on American and Israeli power,and,
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above all, impossible to reduce to a simple explanation. Successive American presidents misjudged him. They often dismissed him as a cartoon autocrat, akin to the faux Adolf Hitler played for laughs by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Certainly, Saddam Hussein was as unsubtle as a shotgun blast. He was a cruel tyrant directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as for the torture or imprisonment of many tens of thousands more. Without serious provocation, he invaded two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait.During the Iran-Iraq War, he gassed Iranian troops and his own rebellious Kurdish population. During the Gulf War, he lobbed terrifying Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel. He plastered Iraq with his image to promote his cult of personality. His speeches were often bombastic and alarming. Against such a record, it seems more than a little odd to argue that Saddam s enemies failed to grasp important nuances of the man and his rule through the Baath Party. Yet as America s tragic invasion to eliminate a nonexistent WMD arsenal amply demonstrated,there was more to Saddam than Washington s politicians and spies could grasp even when the stakes were very high.
The Achilles Trap is an investigation into how this failure of comprehension unfolded. It seeks to enlarge the story of the 2003 invasion s origins by elevating Saddam s side of the conflict and by adding substantial new information. Saddam left an extraordinary and still mostly secret trove of about two thousand hours of tape recordings of his leadershipmeetings private discussions he recorded as assiduously as Richard Nixon as well as meeting minutes, intelligence files, and other materials. They document what the Iraqi leader was saying privately at turning points of his struggle against the United States. The
The Achilles Trap is an investigation into how this failure of comprehension unfolded. It seeks to enlarge the story of the 2003 invasion s origins by elevating Saddam s side of the conflict and by adding substantial new information. Saddam left an extraordinary and still mostly secret trove of about two thousand hours of tape recordings of his leadershipmeetings private discussions he recorded as assiduously as Richard Nixon as well as meeting minutes, intelligence files, and other materials. They document what the Iraqi leader was saying privately at turning points of his struggle against the United States. The
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Autoren-Porträt von Steve Coll
Steve Coll
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Steve Coll
- 2024, 576 Seiten, 1 Schwarz-Weiß-Abbildungen, Maße: 16,2 x 24,1 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0525562265
- ISBN-13: 9780525562269
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
[E]xcellent . . . [A]n engrossing portrait of Hussein, which is drawn from interviews with U.S. officials, U.N. weapons inspectors and surviving members of the dictator s government as well as what Coll calls the Saddam tapes . . . The resulting details he assembles give a more intimate picture of the dictator s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before . . . The new material captures a trained assassin and rural tribesman who could be sharp and worldly, but was more often erratic and paranoid . . . Unlike his main character, Coll succeeds in part because he has an eye for dramatic irony . . . Narcissism is dangerous and can cost a man the opportunity to be wise, Coll quotes him saying. Saddam Hussein failed to understand that he might as well have been talking about himself. New York TimesThe Achilles Trap presents Hussein as a human being, not a caricature. Coll s book, relying as it often does on newly translated Iraqi documents, couldn t have been written back when it might have hindered a war. But it succeeds because of Coll s willingness to reexamine the mutually reinforcing delusions of Hussein and four U.S. administrations . . . Hussein s miscalculations were ultimately fatal. But at times he showed insight, and Coll is gambling that an American audience is now ready to hear about it . . . [A]nother triumph from one of our best journalists. Washington Post
[R]ichly detailed . . . The Achilles Trap the title is a reference to the code name given to a covert CIA effort to topple Saddam is a compelling tale even for those steeped in the sordid history of US-Iraqi relations . . . Coll s narrative is also filled with refreshingly contrarian takes on what otherwise seems like settled history . . . By the book s end, the 2003 invasion feels almost like a disastrous but inevitable coda. Financial Times
[V]oluminously researched
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and compulsively readable . . . Similar to Ghost Wars, Coll s 2004 history of the C.I.A. s encounters with Osama bin Laden before 9/11, the action is cinematic, moving from the Situation Room to the mountains of Kurdistan to the sixth floor of the C.I.A. s original headquarters in Langley, Virginia . . . Coll s book includes plenty of examples of Saddam s cruelty and lust for vengeance, even against members of his own family. Yet the picture that emerges is of a more confounding figure, a power-obsessed but pedantic strongman who wrote romance novels in his spare time, corrected state-TV presenters for grammatical mistakes, and agonized over the failings of his eldest son, Uday. Air Mail
This is the book I ve been hoping for . . . Steve Coll has doggedly obtained documents and interviews to illuminate the Iraq perspective of events from the beginning to end of the Saddam Regime . . . Moreover, he does all this via an entertaining narrative featuring an array of fascinating characters. The Cipher Brief
[Coll] draws on a mountain of documents, interviews, and Saddam Hussein s transcripts and audio tapes, to examine the decades-long history of misunderstandings and missteps on both sides that led to a war that killed some 200,000 Iraqi civilians and thousands of American service personnel and contractors. The Achilles Trap is likely to be the best account of these developments we will ever have. Jerusalem Post
[C]lear, readable, and meticulous . . . Coll presents a lively narrative packed with eye-catching details. Foreign Affairs
[Coll is] a groundbreaking reporter and researcher who is able to uncover new information in a tightly wound arena, but also a deft stylist with a natural gift for both narrative structure and fluent yet surprising writing. Like a baseball player who can both pitch and hit with the best, the rare union places Coll at or near the apex of the craft . . . Though the events of The Achilles Trap concluded 20 years ago, there are few better roadmaps to where American foreign policy in the Middle East has ended up today. BookPage (starred review)
[A] tour de force examination of the events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq . . . That the invasion ultimately proved disastrous has been well documented by others, but Coll s unparalleled research into its background turns up a great deal of unfamiliar, illuminating information. Required reading for all conscientious citizens. Kirkus
Coll (Directorate S., 2018) draws on an enormous cache of unpublished documents here, many obtained by persistent FOIA requests, pertaining to the efforts of both sides in the roller coaster of U.S. and Iraqi relations over three decades. The result is a deep dive that illuminates previously unstudied and unexamined aspects of personalities, policies, events, and reactions of great consequence to both countries. Coll's chronicle is powerful and compelling, detailing many mistakes and failures by intelligence and elected officials that led to the disastrous invasion and occupation in 2003 . . . Expertly researched and written, the latest from Pulitzer Prize winner Coll is a cautionary tale for the ages. Booklist
This is the book I ve been hoping for . . . Steve Coll has doggedly obtained documents and interviews to illuminate the Iraq perspective of events from the beginning to end of the Saddam Regime . . . Moreover, he does all this via an entertaining narrative featuring an array of fascinating characters. The Cipher Brief
[Coll] draws on a mountain of documents, interviews, and Saddam Hussein s transcripts and audio tapes, to examine the decades-long history of misunderstandings and missteps on both sides that led to a war that killed some 200,000 Iraqi civilians and thousands of American service personnel and contractors. The Achilles Trap is likely to be the best account of these developments we will ever have. Jerusalem Post
[C]lear, readable, and meticulous . . . Coll presents a lively narrative packed with eye-catching details. Foreign Affairs
[Coll is] a groundbreaking reporter and researcher who is able to uncover new information in a tightly wound arena, but also a deft stylist with a natural gift for both narrative structure and fluent yet surprising writing. Like a baseball player who can both pitch and hit with the best, the rare union places Coll at or near the apex of the craft . . . Though the events of The Achilles Trap concluded 20 years ago, there are few better roadmaps to where American foreign policy in the Middle East has ended up today. BookPage (starred review)
[A] tour de force examination of the events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq . . . That the invasion ultimately proved disastrous has been well documented by others, but Coll s unparalleled research into its background turns up a great deal of unfamiliar, illuminating information. Required reading for all conscientious citizens. Kirkus
Coll (Directorate S., 2018) draws on an enormous cache of unpublished documents here, many obtained by persistent FOIA requests, pertaining to the efforts of both sides in the roller coaster of U.S. and Iraqi relations over three decades. The result is a deep dive that illuminates previously unstudied and unexamined aspects of personalities, policies, events, and reactions of great consequence to both countries. Coll's chronicle is powerful and compelling, detailing many mistakes and failures by intelligence and elected officials that led to the disastrous invasion and occupation in 2003 . . . Expertly researched and written, the latest from Pulitzer Prize winner Coll is a cautionary tale for the ages. Booklist
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