An investigative history of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes reveals the story his trial never will. <BR>In February 1991, the Shia of southern Iraq rose against Saddam Hussein. Barry M. Lando, a former investigative producer for "60 Minutes," argues compellingly that this ill-fated uprising represents one instance among many of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity. The Shia were responding to the call for rebellion from President George H.W. Bush that was broadcast repeatedly across Iraq by clandestine CIA stations. But, just as the revolution was on the brink of success, the United States and its allies turned their backs: U.S. troops destroyed huge weapons caches to prevent them from falling into rebel hands and blocked rebels trying to reach Baghdad. In the end, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, were massacred. <BR>Because of restrictions imposed by the Special Tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein, the extensive role of the U.S. and its allies in his crimes will never be explored at his trial. But as "Web of Deceit" demonstrates, the nations that now denounce Saddam most prominently secretly backed the dictator from his rise to power in the 1960s and '70s to his offensives in Iran and, despite warnings, took no action to stop his invasion of Kuwait. They also turned their backs when he used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and persisted in international sanctions long after they had proved ineffective and, for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, lethal. <BR>"Web of Deceit" draws on a wide range of journalism and scholarship to present a complete picture of what really happened in Iraq under Saddam, detailing--forthe first time--the complicity of the West in its full and alarming extent.

"The Iraq invasion of 2003 was only the latest in a long line of episodes of Western manipulation in that country, which owes its existence — and its complex and troubled demographics — to the designs of British imperialists. Lando, a 60 Minutes investigative producer and filmmaker, carefully arranges all the threads of modern Iraqi political history and liberally doles out the guilt. Though the subtitle mentions Churchill and Kennedy, the book covers the period from WWI through the 1970s in the first two chapters, with the bulk devoted to Iraq after 1989. Through extensive quotes from politicians, statesmen and official documents, Lando exposes the duplicity and ulterior motives that have pervaded the West's dealings Iraq. From the CIA's artificial prolonging of the Iran-Iraq War to the legendary betrayals of the Kurds and Shiites, the result has been death and destruction on a massive scale. Though the prose is sometimes dry and Lando's focus on Machiavellian politics makes it hard to get a clear view of Iraqi society, his book offers readers a grasp of the country America has broken more than perhaps any other." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The December 30, 2006 hanging of Saddam Hussein apparently dashed any hopes that a fair and transparent judicial process for the Iraqi dictator would also bring to light the complicity of Western leaders for his many crimes. Fortunately for the historical record, Lando (a investigative producer with 60 Minutes for 25 years) has gone back to the period of the British Mandate of Iraq and exposed the hypocrisy of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and other Western leaders as they wring their hands and cry crocodile tears over Saddam's many victims. He describes Winston Churchill's bombing of Iraqis (in order to instill in them a "lively terror") as a precedent for Saddam's terror, CIA sponsorship of the young Saddam as he rose through the ranks of the Ba`ath Party (which the CIA also used to massacre putative Iraqi Communists on CIA-supplied lists), Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's cynical encouragement of Kurdish rebellion against the central government and see-no-evil attitude towards Saddam Hussein as he brutally crushed the uprising in 1975 after it no longer served US goals, and George H.W. Bush's similar actions in the wake of the first Gulf War. He also describes how the US and other Western powers looked the other way as Saddam "gassed his own people" at Halabja because they were encouraging his war against Iran during the 1980s, and even how the chemical weapons used to carry out those attacks were supplied by French, Belgian, and German firms. He takes the narrative "full circle" from the British Mandate to the US occupation. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Barry M. Lando spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes. The author of numerous articles about Iraq, he produced a documentary about Saddam Hussein that has been shown around the world. He lives in Paris.