On 20 March 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, capturing Baghdad within months and toppling Saddam Hussein, the dictatorial leader who had ruled since 1979. This invasion was a pivotal moment in Iraqi history, creating a vacuum of power that would lead to years of civil war. By 2023, 200,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed by US forces and sectarian fighting caused by the invasion (446). From the American government’s perspective, a wide variety of factors including threats to US national security, UN resolutions that made international demands of the Iraqi state, and attempts to grab geopolitical power by Hussein led to the invasion. The current scholarship on the conflict is divided between two views. Those who supported the US invasion blame Iraq, citing their lies over whether or not they had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs); meanwhile, those more critical of the United States tend to cast President George W. Bush as a warmonger who stirred popular opinion to obtain global power. Steve Coll, in his book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq, outlines how Iraq and the United States interacted from the 1980s up until 2003, ultimately leading to the invasion.

Coll calls for a new analysis of the war, one that goes back nearly twenty years to the beginning of Hussein’s reign and analyzes his education, family, and the intelligence community he surrounded himself with. After listening to thousands of hours of recordings from personal meetings between Hussein and his allies and reviewing an abundance of US State Department records from US officials and presidents, Coll presents an extensive overview of the buildup to the war. Coll divides his book into three parts. The first addresses Hussein’s rise to power and the Iran–Iraq War, covering the years 1979 to 1990. The second part covers the period of the Gulf War of 1990 until 9/11 in 2001, and in the third part he covers the aftermath of 9/11, until the US invasion in 2003. Starting in the 1980s with Hussein’s ascension to power, Coll outlines the relationship that President Ronald Reagan and the CIA shared with Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War, when the United States favored an Iraqi victory. The United States feared the new Iranian government, which was anti-American, and believed Hussein, although authoritarian, would be a counterbalance to Iranian power. The United States and Iraq shared intelligence and the belief that this would lead to a friendship between them, but the idea was shattered by the Iran-Contra affair of 1986, which Hussein took as evidence of American duplicity (103). Hussein’s strong belief in the CIA’s treacherous actions influenced his paranoia and fed into a misinterpretation of what actions the United States would take against him. Hussein saw the United States’ backing of his Iranian enemies as further proof that the CIA was out to get him. According to Coll, “what many Americans understood as staggering incompetence in their nation’s foreign policy, Saddam interpreted as manipulative genius” (108). This sentence becomes crucial to understanding Coll’s argument, that is, how each country misunderstood the other.

The end of the Cold War with the fall of the Soviet Union played into Hussein’s paranoia, as Hussein saw the United States as the sole unchallenged superpower and feared what this could mean for the US presence in the Middle East. Hussein became more critical of the United States; privately, he showed a great hatred for the United States and how it was influencing certain nations, such as the Gulf states. One example occurs in early 1990, when in private meetings Saddam referred to the United States as “Satan” and the Gulf states as timid and not deserving of their wealth (161–63). It was all talk for several years, and the United States, along with its Arab allies such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, believed Hussein was bluffing to appear strong (165). That belief was changed in 1990, when Hussein invaded Kuwait and a US-led coalition under President George H.W. Bush defeated Hussein. The Gulf War was the first illustration of the misconceptions each nation had, as Bush’s government considered Hussein an irrational leader who would not act on his words, and Hussein saw Bush as leader of a world power that had shown no interest in deterring him from invading Kuwait. Hussein’s attack started a chain reaction of misunderstandings and escalating tensions that would lead both countries down a dark path.

The Clinton administration and the next Bush administration continued to act according to increasingly negative perceptions of Hussein and his rule; meanwhile, Hussein’s perceptions of the United States as an enemy of Iraq only grew worse. Coll points out that “Saddam tended to think that the CIA was omniscient, that it knew Iraq’s important secrets,” and this irrational thinking presented itself at every turn (175). Hussein’s misconceptions, such as his belief that the CIA was all-knowing and spying on him, were never realized by the United States. The CIA was indeed spying on Hussein, but their information was limited and mostly false due to the lack of contact with high-ranking Iraqi officials. As a result, Hussein made bold statements, such as in the aftermath of 9/11, when he said, “The United States reaps the thorns that its leaders have planted in the world . . . [and] has become a burden on all of us” (373). Hussein never feared retaliation, because in his mind the CIA already knew he was lying (101–2). Furthermore, Coll expertly points to the fact that Hussein believed that the CIA knew he did not have WMDs, and that the United States’ ultimate goal was to remove Hussein from power. National Security Council and state department officials, on the other hand, believed Hussein was a liar, and the belief that he was lying “confirmed” beliefs that Iraq was building a nuclear arsenal, hiding the truth from UN inspectors. Therefore US officials saw Hussein as a huge threat to US interests. As more of Hussein’s lies, such as the extent of Iraq’s hidden nuclear program, were revealed by UN inspectors from the 1990s onward, the United States again and again adhered to the misconception that Hussein was a liar and would threaten American interests unless silenced (246). Furthermore, with all the lies told, the United States did not believe Hussein even when he spoke the truth, nor did they believe the United Nations, such as in late 2002 when Hussein gave a written statement allowing inspectors to come to Iraq with full access to show he did not have WMDs. US officials doubted the inspections would find anything, because they believed Hussein was so deceitful he would find a way to hide his supposed WMDs from the UN. Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, believed Iraq’s declaration and any subsequent inspections “would be a sham” (411).

The creation of this misconception was influenced by the Clinton administration, which cut off diplomatic contact with Hussein, using only CIA field agents, Iraqi proxies, or the UN to speak with him, destroying any chance for official contact (448–49). By 2003, the state department and presidency had not spoken with Hussein directly in almost ten years, leading to a false perception that could not be changed. The United States had no way to know what Hussein was thinking or to maintain any relationship with him, further contributing to a breakdown in communication. The culmination of this twenty-year history of misunderstandings, misconceptions, and confirmation bias, Coll argues, was war between the United States and Iraq. Although Coll does not say it explicitly, he does not seek to blame one side or portray one as the first aggressor, instead acknowledging the miscommunications and misconceptions of both that brought about these events.

There are two common scholarly framings of the US invasion of Iraq. Some scholars have argued that the invasion itself was justified under a national security context, whereas others argue that it should be understood as Bush’s power grab for global hegemony. Scholars such as Melvin Leffler argue that the United States justified the war in the context of protecting US interests in the aftermath of 9/11. After 9/11, the United States had to reinterpret how threats to US national security were evaluated, according to Leffler, and in this context, Iraq posed an unprecedented threat. In contrast, scholars like Ahsan Butt argue that, in the aftermath of 9/11, the US government felt like it had lost its global power and needed to reassert its control. The goal of the invasion of Iraq, in this view, was to assert US dominance and power on a global scale. Although most scholarship focuses exclusively on the post 9/11 time frame, Coll explores a much longer history that does not sit squarely on either side of the scholarship. Instead, Coll’s work offers a fresh, new perspective that brings new sources and scholarship to the debate.

Coll uses an abundance of primary sources such as acquired transcripts, audio files, and documents from Hussein, including information about his personal meetings with his family and generals (15–17). Coll also obtained hundreds of documents from the Pentagon, drawing from US and Iraqi sources to make an argument that offers the perspective of both sides. Coll’s work shifts the view of Hussein as a maniacal mastermind who was plotting against the United States for years to a paranoid and irrational leader who was consumed with his own fears, causing him to speak with confidence that he did not have. His irrational behavior and persona were not understood by the United States, which, after years of not trusting him, used that distrust to start a war that would completely change Iraq and its people to the present day. Coll’s work advances the scholarship by furthering the argument that the US invasion was due to misinformation, not just embracing this idea but advocating for it through an extensive study of the political actors.

Coll elegantly pieces together a large quantity of primary sources to craft an incredible narrative on US and Iraqi relations. Coll’s level of detail surrounding the events, his study of the major characters, and his extensive use of sources all come together to create a powerful story on foreign policy. His book reads like a well-written novel with an extensive list of characters and a narrative arc that follows the road to the invasion of Iraq, which makes it accessible to a wider audience than just academics. Coll’s only weakness is that the sources he uses are selective and only a partial record of what he could get. He elaborates on this, claiming that when the US forces captured Saddam Hussein, they took an even larger cache of sources back to the United States, and that they only approved a fraction of these files for Coll to use in his book (464). Moreover, the English translations that were given for these files were not always the best; here, however, Coll contends that he spoke with scholars on Iraqi politics to clear up any errors. Coll acknowledges that the files he received could be only what the US government was willing to release to paint a certain picture of Hussein and the conflict. Even with that criticism in mind, Coll’s book does much to advance the field of US–Iraqi relations and showcases a masterful understanding of the connection between the two countries and how it has changed over the years.