Saddam Hussein: 'Not a lunatic'

Such behavior, mimicked by ever- present security forces, has instilled great fear throughout the population – giving the president absolute power over his country. "There are no restraints," says Mr. Cockburn. Such power "went to his head," suggests Aburish, pointing out that in his earlier days Hussein was known for not standing on ceremony and for working efficiently on ambitious development plans for the country's oil industry, its transport sector, and its schools.

Twenty years ago, Aburish remembers, government offices were hung with photographs of a small room in a modest village house – Hussein's birthplace in the poverty-stricken region of Tikrit. Today, the offices are decorated with grandiose portraits of the president. "It reflects a certain transformation in the character of the man," says Aburish.

Aburish also points to the way Iraqi officials a few years ago stopped using the traditional Arab hug and kiss on the cheek in greeting the president, and instead began kissing his lapels. "That's what you do to a holy man," he says.

Such signs appear to confirm what expert observers have long seen as Hussein's "exaggerated sense of his own heroic role in history," as Cockburn puts it, illustrated by his dedication to rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon even at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.

The Iraqi leader has made no secret of his ambition to build on his deep nationalism to become the undisputed leader of the Arab people, defying the West in the fashion of the late Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser.

Behind the grand vision and the iron fist, however, some analysts suggest that Saddam Hussein might actually be an insecure man. "I firmly believe that the man is shy," says Aburish. "He avoids eye contact, there is no small talk in him," and those who have met him have noted his limp handshake.

"His grandiose facade masks underlying insecurity," Dr. Post, the former CIA analyst, who now teaches psychology at Georgetown University, argued in testimony to Congress before the Gulf War.

That may account for Hussein's intensely secretive habits. The day before the Iraqi Army invaded Kuwait in 1990, fewer than a dozen people knew of the war plan, according to Saad al-Bazzaz, who headed Iraqi radio and television at the time. In 1972, when Hussein nationalized the oil industry, he told local industry employees of his intentions only two hours before the official announcement.

That approach probably means that few people even in his inner circle know how he intends to play his hand now. But in Post's view, the Iraqi president sees the weapons of mass destruction he is alleged to control as central to his self-image as a world-class politician.

"Big boys have big toys," says Post. "The chances of his yielding on weapons of mass destruction are between zero and none. But he is quite prudent, and I see no chance of him giving such weapons to terrorists or launching a direct attack on the US," because that would bring catastrophic retaliation from Washington.

Those weapons, if he possesses them, give Hussein a degree of power – and he would do anything to hold onto them, since "power is the only language he understands," Post argues. "He is impressive, a very wily guy, a quintessential survivor, and if he can stave off disaster by making a show of open inspections, he will."

But Washington's talk of regime change, not just disarmament, "is backing him into a corner. He doesn't have to be paranoid to think that we are out to get him," Post adds. If Hussein were attacked, "we could reliably predict the use of such weapons [of mass destruction] against Israel and US ground forces."

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