About as coherent an answer as we are likely to get to the most maddeningly complex question about the Iraq War: "Why？" Steve Coll's prodigious researching， reporting， and writing background on the Middle East and Central Asia （Ghost Wars， especially） helps him create this book's densely factual yet compulsively readable narrative。 Through it all， Saddam Hussein emerges as not the monomaniacal cartoon dictator of pro-war propaganda but a far more recognizable type: the Qaddafi-like paranoid auto About as coherent an answer as we are likely to get to the most maddeningly complex question about the Iraq War: "Why？" Steve Coll's prodigious researching， reporting， and writing background on the Middle East and Central Asia （Ghost Wars， especially） helps him create this book's densely factual yet compulsively readable narrative。 Through it all， Saddam Hussein emerges as not the monomaniacal cartoon dictator of pro-war propaganda but a far more recognizable type: the Qaddafi-like paranoid autocrat who didn't realize the ground had shifted under his feet until it was too late。 This is history as tragic farce。 。。。more