Arc of Power Ends In Utter Ignominy

Formative Years

Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was born on April 28, 1937, in the village of Auja, a cluster of mud-brick huts outside Tikrit, north of Baghdad. His father, Hussein Majid, was a peasant who disappeared before his son was born. His mother, who remarried, entrusted Hussein to the care of an uncle, Khayrallah Tulfah, an army officer and opponent of the British-backed monarchy then ruling Iraq.

Hussein started elementary school when he was about 10. At 18, he moved to Baghdad with Tulfah and enrolled at the Karkh high school. Soon after, he joined the Baath (or Renaissance) Party, the Arab nationalist movement founded by a Syrian Christian in the 1940s. Its members were angered by what they saw as the subservience of Arab peoples under European colonialism, and they yearned to create a single socialist Arab state.

Hussein carved a niche for himself as a party strongman, and in 1959, at age 22, he participated in an attempt to assassinate Gen. Abdul Karim Qassem, the Iraqi ruler who had overthrown the monarchy with other military officers the year before.

The Baathist account of this coup attempt would later play up Hussein's role; according to one tale taught in Iraqi schools, he carved a bullet out of his own leg after being wounded. He then retreated to Syria and Egypt, returning to Iraq in 1963. While still in exile in Egypt, Hussein married a cousin, Sajida Khayrallah Tulfah, the daughter of his uncle. They had two sons -- Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a shootout with U.S. troops in July 2003 -- and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala.

The Baath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968, under the leadership of Hussein's relative, Gen. Ahmed Hassan Bakr. Hussein used such family connections to help maneuver himself into position as the ruling government's No. 2 man, in charge of intelligence and security services.

Over time he developed a reputation as a man willing to go to brutal lengths to silence opposition and repress the Shiites and Kurds, as well as those within his own party he considered a threat. Charismatic and intimidating, he was known as "the deputy" but served in the role of a prime minister.

In 1975, a time when his associates said he had mellowed into middle age, Hussein struck Washington Post reporter Jim Hoagland as a man who "still moves with the tightly coiled violence and fluid grace of Vince Lombardi's best linebackers at Green Bay. Wariness flickers in his dark, expressive eyes throughout a meeting with a visitor."

Reins of Power

Hussein's formal ascension to absolute rule occurred in 1979, when he pushed Bakr aside and simultaneously assumed the titles of president, prime minister, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, secretary general of the Baath Party's regional command and commander in chief of the armed forces.

"And he was only 42 years old," Karsh and Rautsi wrote. "Here was a man in his prime, full of ambitious plans and, above all, grim determination to keep his hold on the levers of power at all costs."

To solidify his position, Hussein presided over a firing squad that killed more than 20 officials for alleged disloyalty. Many of those executed were Hussein's close associates.

Hussein's rule brought a series of wars to Iraq, but also a period of relative internal stability, free from the frequent military coups that had characterized earlier decades. He created a secular Middle Eastern state known for its vibrant university and public health systems and relatively open to Western values, compared with countries in the region governed by strict religious codes. He also built roads and bridges, launched literacy campaigns and provided free hospital care for Iraqis.

To cultivate his image, Hussein lavished oil money on opulent palaces, sprawling monuments, statues and portraits. One painting depicted him wearing a business suit and smoking a cigar. Others showed him as a military commander in fatigues and a beret, as a devout Muslim praying in a mosque, or as an interlocutor of Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylonia, whom Hussein claimed as an ancestor.