Con Coughlin, Saddam – King of Terror (New York: Harper Collins, 2002). 350 pages. $26.95

Click here to purchase "Saddam – King of Terror directly from Amazon.com

By Scott B. MacDonald

It has become popular to write about Saddam Hussein. Indeed, a small sea of ink is now dedicated to explaining how a man who became one of the most powerful Arab leaders in modern times emerged from a hard and deprived childhood. Yet, Saddam is now well-known through the world for presiding over a near-totalitarian regime and for bringing the world down the path of another Middle Eastern war. One of the books that stands out from the pack is Con Coughlin’s Saddam – King of Terror, which in some ways harkens back to Samir al-Khalil’s Republic of Fear (1989) in terms of chronicling the brutish, but methodical nature of Saddam’s Ba’athist regime.

Coughlin sets the tone of his book in the very beginning by stating: “Writing a biography of Saddam Hussein is like trying to assemble the prosecution case against a notorious criminal gangster. Most of the key witnesses have either been murdered, or are too afraid to talk.” To Coughlin, Saddam is a creation of his roots, much like Hitler and Stalin, who also overcome their less auspicious starts in life to take absolute control of their respective nations. As he notes, “The shame of his humble origins was to become the driving force of his ambition, while the deep sense of insecurity that he developed as a consequence of his peripatetic childhood left him pathologically incapable in later life of trusting anyone -- including his immediate family.”

Saddam began his political career as a political thug, gradually climbing up the ranks of the Baathist party, especially following the 1968 coup that brought them to power. The climb to power was one marked by ruthlessness and tenacity. Much like Stalin, Saddam focused on the machinery of the state, quietly assuming power. By July 1979, Saddam officially became the president of Iraq, then one of the more developed and wealthiest Arab nations. He followed this by purges of the Baath party, the military and the bureaucracy. In the place of many of the fallen, Saddam placed his family and trusted cohorts.

What makes Saddam such an interesting historical figure is that he was not content with ruling just Iraq. Bigger dreams beckoned. In many regards, he saw himself as a modern-day Saladin, being the man to re-unify the Arab world and re-take Jerusalem. In this, he sought to carve up his bigger neighbor Iran, which had incited Iraq’s local Shitte population. The ensuing war was to last from 1980 to 1988, result in wrecking the Iraqi economy and leaving thousands dead or wounded from the brutal, yet inconclusive conflict. Only a couple of years later, Saddam launched the invasion of Kuwait. That was to end up with the near-destruction of the Saddam regime.

What Coughlin finds the most interesting is Saddam Hussein’s ability to survive. Despite major setbacks, numerous coups and assassination attempts, and the hostility of the United States, the “bully of Baghdad” has managed to cling to power. He attributes this to Saddam’s ability to maintain control over the security apparatus, rely on only a very small group of people, and the regime’s manipulation of the country’s oil wealth. The last always allowed Saddam to buy the necessary weapons from the outside world and to have some degree of largesse for keeping the key troops happy.

Coughlin’s book is certainly timely and informative. It paints a picture of a man who is clearly an over-achiever in the most bizarre sense – a dictator willing and ready to eliminate, though continuous purges anyone that remotely resembled a threat. At the same time, Coughlin is certain that Saddam has been active in seeking to re-arm Iraq, including with weapons of mass destruction. As he noted: ‘even the medical supplies shipped in by the U.N. were exploited by the regime, and ended up being sold on the black market in Jordan, the profits being channeled back to the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. The lion’s share of the substantial income Saddam received from these various illicit activities was spent on arms.” Most of the arms came from China, North Korea, Russia and Serbia.

Whether or not one agrees with the Bush administration’s decision to pursue war with Iraq, anyone reading Coughlin’s book comes off not wishing Saddam Hussein well. At the same time, it also makes one wonder about difficult nature of the rocky soil that Iraq will offer for any attempt to create a democratic government in a post-Saddam society.

Robert Beaumont, The Railway King: A Biography of George Hudson, Railway Pioneer and Fraudster, (London: Review, 2002). 274 pages UK Pounds 14.99

Reviewed by Scott B. MacDonald

Click here to purchase The Railway King: A Biography of George Hudson, Railway Pioneer and Fraudster directly from Amazon.com

In a world currently marked by corporate scandals and the controversial figures behind them, it is often instructive to remember that we have been on this stage before. History is filled with scoundrels, rouges, and hucksters. Despite being labeled as such, not all scandal-linked individuals are necessarily “evil” and, indeed, in a warped way, some good has come out of their efforts. One such individual that has been much vilified, but arguably did some good was George Hudson, known in the 19th century as the “railway king”. In his well-researched and easily readable The Railway King, Robert Beaumont, a journalist for the York-based Yorkshire Evening Press, undertakes the challenge of a man who “led a turbulent and mould-breaking existence”. According to Beaumont, Hudson was many things, probably the most significant of which was his role in Great Britain’s industrial revolution, in particular, with the development of railways.

Hudson began life in 1800 in relatively poor surroundings in Yorkshire. He was apparently kicked out of his home for fathering an illegitimate child. From those humble beginnings, Hudson was to work his way up at a drapers firm. However, in 1827, fortune smiled on him as a distant relative died and left him a small fortune. He took part of that inheritance and bought shares of the North Midland Railway. Over time, he came to control over a third of Britain’s rail network, which mostly hubbed out of York. Indeed, Hudson made York a commercial hub as he quickly grasped, ahead of many others, that rail travel was the wave of the future. In this, he was similar to those that understood that the Internet was a revolutionary breakthrough. He was also an excellent salesman, which helped him sway many to put their money into his company’s shares. At his high point, Hudson employed tens of thousands of workers, was a leading member of the Conservative Party, and laid hundreds of miles of virgin track.

Yet, for all the positives of Hudson’s life, there was a downside. As did the Internet in its time, rail in its time was a major force in financial markets, capable of creating and destroying great fortunes through speculation. In this Hudson was a primary force. He was a man of vision and an excellent salesman. He was also a polarizer – people tended to either really like and trust him or hate him. Part of the reason for this Beaumont notes, was that his subject was “a mass of contradictions: immensely hard-working, yet dangerous self-indulgent; tremendously generous, yet a purveyor of the sharpest financial practices; poorly educated and roughly spoken, but a quick-witted visionary; and unbearably arrogant, yet strongly humble at the end.”

What did Hudson in was his financial practices – sloppy at best, intentional at worst, he offered investors big dividends, but eventually questionable profits. In a sense, the finances behind Hudson’s many railway companies were like so many ponzi-schemes, with new money in, new money to old investors, while the newest contributors waited for their profits. At the same time, Beaumont notes: “The problem was that he had difficulty in differentiating between his own interests and those of his companies, but that is a failing common to autocratic businessmen.” (Look at the former heads of Tyco International, WorldCom and Adelphia). He further elaborates: “It is essential that George Hudson was simply behaving in exactly the same manner as the other managers and directors of Britain’s railway companies across the country. They were making up the rules as they went along, as occasionally happens in fast-growing new industries.”

Hudson was eventually voted out of the House of Commons, saddled with large debts from failed companies, hounded by creditors and angry company boards, and viciously attacked by his detractors. At one stage, he fled to France, where he lived well below his former splendor. Hudson finally was able to return from exile and be re-united with his wife, who he had left behind. He was to die in 1871, though his name was to remain considerably tarnished until recently.

Considering the current round of fascination with business scandals and the key personalities involved, Beaumont’s book about George Hudson reminds us that these figures are far more complex than being transfixed between simple faces of good and evil. At the end of the day, they must be seen as simply individuals, forced to make decisions about how to conduct their business – for the better or the worse. However, for this reviewer, Hudson remains a far more sympathetic figure than the top management at Enron, WorldCom or Qwest. Rules and regulations concerning corporate governance were rudimentary during Hudson’s day; today the rules and regulations are far more clear-cut. While Hudson is perhaps entitled to a fair shake in the historical sense, it is likely that Bernie Ebbers, Kenneth Lay and Ralph Nuccio will have to wait much longer. We strongly recommend Beaumont’s The Railway King.