Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the world looked radically different to decision makers in Baghdad than to their counterparts in Washington, D.C. Saddam Hussein, trying to understand the baffling aspects of U.S. domestic politics, spent countless hours discussing America with his advisers. As he told visiting U.S. senators in April 1990, politicians in America and Iraq “need to know the history of the two countries as to the basic factors related to social, cultural, and political life, because this knowledge is indispensable if one wants to draw the proper conclusions.” For Saddam, America was a “complicated country” with confusing political processes. Despite his efforts to learn, Saddam's beliefs about the United States were frequently grossly inaccurate.