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Saddam Hussein

Putting the War on Terror on the Couch: Vamik Volkan’s Blind Trust

In his new book, Blind Trust, psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan offers starkly different terms for what he sees as a troubling "societal regression." Volkan looks at bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the Bush administration and sees id, ego, and superego; he sees the war on terror as a series of "psychodynamics" and explains foreign policy as trickle-down Freudianism. Welcome to the world of psychopolitics.

Inside Saddam’s Spider Hole

Two pairs of shoes still in their boxes: a pair of clean new Hongmahwang loafers and a pair of gilded, tacky Italian slippers. The footwear of a madman caught last December hiding in a rat-filled hole almost within sight of one of his many palaces.

Capturing Saddam: Iraq, December 2003

The spartan interior of a U.S. Air Force C-130 has uncomfortable web seating. Our gear is strapped to a pallet in the aft section, where clamshell doors yawn open until we accelerate down the runway. This airplane is all business—bare fuselage walls and exposed bulkheads, longerons, and stringers.