The Fall of Baghdad

401 Pages·2004·1.37 MB·English

by  Jon Lee Anderson

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The Fall of Baghdad
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Also by Jon Lee Anderson
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The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan
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Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
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Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World
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Inside the League (with Scott Anderson)
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War Zones (with Scott Anderson)
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T h e Fa l l o f
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Baghdad
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J O N L E E A N D E R S O N 23
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THE PENGUIN PRESS 32
NEW YORK 33
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2004
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THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. •
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division
of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL,
England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin
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Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2004 by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Jon Lee Anderson, 2004
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Anderson, Jon Lee.
The fall of Baghdad /Jon Lee Anderson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
MSR ISBN 0 7865 5255 7
AEB ISBN 0 7865 5256 5

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To Erica, Bella, Rosie, and Máximo
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P r e f a c e 3
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I first traveled to Iraq because of the phenomenon of Saddam Hussein. 13CO
In a sense Saddam inhabited a mythological realm, like a throwback 14
to Herod’s day, when warrior kings reigned as semidivine creatures, 15
malevolent and munificent all at once, capable of the greatest cruelties as 16
well as the most extravagant gestures of patronage. There he was, at the 17
dawn of the twenty-first century, a head of state who was indisputably a 18
war criminal, an international fugitive who lived a clandestine life in his 19
own nation and who survived in power thanks to—not in spite of—the 20
terror he inspired in his people. Anything that could be said of Saddam 21
had become, somehow, believable. 22
I wanted to witness Saddam’s tyranny and to understand what made it 23
work. I was also drawn by a feeling of certainty that there would inevitably 24
be a new war between the United States and Iraq. It was something that 25
had been preordained, I believed, since the Gulf War, when Iraq’s army 26
was defeated and yet Saddam had been allowed to remain in power. By 27
the time George W. Bush was sworn into office in January 2001, it was 28
clear that the UN sanctions regime that had held Saddam in check for the 29
past decade had run its course and that a new means of dealing with him 30
had to be found. As we now know, Bush had already decided that the best 31
thing to do was to go to war and to get rid of Saddam Hussein. 32
This book is my account of that war, about what led up to it and what 33
has happened in Iraq since it occurred. Iraq’s story is still an unfolding one, 34
of course, and now it has also become an American story. By invading and 35S
occupying Iraq, the United States has fused its destiny with Iraq’s for the 36R
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