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But even Iraq's Arab neighbors are made nervous by Saddam's demonstrated . willingness to use his weapons. One year after assuming the presidency in 1979, Saddam sent his armies into Iran, anticipating a quick and easy grab of disputed territory. Before a cease-fire halted the fighting eight years later, Saddam had used his chemical weapons against Iran's soldiers and fired his missiles on Tehran and other cities. During the savage war, Saddam enunciated to a visiting Arab delegation his guiding philosophy toward the region by pounding a table with his shoe and shouting, "That's the only way to treat Arabs!"
The roots of Saddam's totalitarian impulse can be traced to the northern Iraqi town of Tikrit, where he was born in 1937 to an impoverished peasant family. Fatherless, Saddam spent much of his youth with his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, an army officer who in 1941 supported a failed attempt to topple Iraq's British-controlled monarchy. Talfah's five-year imprisonment instilled in the young Saddam a profound bitterness that would give rise to a nationalistic fervor and an acute desire to rid not only Iraq but also the entire Arab world of foreign influence.
Saddam's first venture into subversive politics came in 1956 when, as a new member of the Baath Party, he participated in an abortive coup against King Faisal II. The task was completed two years later by military strongman Abdul Karim Kassem. When the Baathists fared no better under the new regime, Saddam was tapped by the party in 1959 to assassinate Kassem. That attempt also failed, but Saddam emerged a hero as stories circulated of how he had a companion dig a bullet from his leg with a penknife, then to Syria disguised as a Bedouin.
By 1968 the Baath Party was firmly entrenched, and Saddam embarked on a rising career that earned him the monicker "Butcher of Baghdad." He ordered up, presided over and even participated in executions of rivals, some of them once close friends. Two years ago, Saddam ordered the trial of his own son Uday, who had clubbed to death a presidential bodyguard. Eventually Saddam succumbed to appeals for clemency, and Uday was merely sent into brief exile.
For a man who aims to dominate the Arab world, the Iraqi leader is reclusive and aloof. He has not traveled outside the Arab world since 1985, and rarely grants interviews. Despite a feverish cult of personality, little is known about his habits or tastes beyond the image he cultivates as a patron of music and poetry. Those outside his tightly controlled inner circle have little sense of the humorless man who hides behind bombastic statements and paternalistic visits to the countryside.
Hence his every action becomes grist for analysis. Saddam's obsession with security, which includes periodic purges of the party and the military, may merely be prudent, though some analysts see hints of paranoia. Yet most are convinced that Saddam is cunningly sane. "He is not a lunatic," says a high- ranking Israeli intelligence official. "He is a megalomaniac, but he is rational." Concurs Philip Robins, head of Middle East programs at the London- based Royal Institute of International Affairs: "He is not driven by ideology or whim. He coldly calculates every move."