Recommended Reading

I love to read books, but admit that I am a very slow reader. I read a couple blogs where the authors frequently post book reviews. These gals go through 50+ books a year, whereas I maybe get through 6, and that's a good year. Beside the point...

I just finished this book about a woman who grew up as the daughter of Saddam Hussein's personal pilot. It was creepy and very fascinating to hear her tell of Saddam's rise to power and the frightening similarities between him and people like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. In fact, she says, that Saddam idolized those men and not only wanted to be like them, but to be "better than them". She described some of the "parties" that Saddam's sons held and what they did to people, women in general.

The most amazing thing to me was learning what Iraq was like before the reign of Saddam. Women wearing mini-skirts, affluence, neighborhoods that one would mistake for Suburban Middle America... It was amazing -- a whole different world than Iraq seems to be today.

When Saddam was preparing to take power and become President of Iraq, he very carefully chose "friends". These people were the cream of society, young couples or families who were well-off or wealthy financially, and might have any bit of influence. One of these families was Salbi's. He surrounded himself with these people and basically guilted or blackmailed them into being his followers. The level of fear that one man, along with his 'clan from Tikrit' put upon a whole nation of people is absolutely incredible. It was a very enlightening read, to say the least.