The World

In October, American troops, aided by sympathetic northern warlords, many of them Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, invaded Afghanistan. Special units, Operational Detachment Alpha 574, rode south on horseback, taking part in history’s last cavalry charges. The quick conquest and the establishment of a new president, Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun whose father had been shot by the Taliban, encouraged an exhilarating confidence in American paramountcy that called for a wider mission. Amir Omar escaped to Pakistan, as did bin Laden, both aided by the Haqqani terror dynasty led by the founder’s son Sirajuddin.

Although there was no real connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, in January 2002 Bush warned Americans of an Axis of Evil – the phrase a reference to the Hitler Axis of the Second World War – including North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which could not be permitted ‘to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons’. Cheney and Rumsfeld proposed an ambitious escalation: not only to destroy an unfinished enemy, Saddam Hussein, but to impose American democracy in west Asia.

Saddam had slaughtered rebel Kurds and Arabs to restore his power after Desert Storm, but in August 1995, his two sons-in-law – cousins, the brothers Hussein and Saddam Kamel, married to his daughters Raghad and Rana – suddenly fled Baghdad and drove in a convoy across the desert to Jordan, where they were given asylum. The loss of his daughters was humiliating, but the Kamels had clashed with the demented Uday, who dubbed himself Abu Sarhan – Son of the Wolf – and was once again terrorizing Baghdad: girls were raped, men beaten; a group of French tourists were forced to have sex with each other at gunpoint. All remembered not his mania but his ‘eerie quietness’. He had recently rushed into a family party, fought with his brothers-in-law and, drawing his gun, accidently shot an uncle in the leg.

Hussein Kamel, who had helped procure Saddam’s illegal weapons, had destroyed them after 1991 and now, debriefed by the CIA, he confirmed their destruction. But Saddam approached the brothers through his daughters, promising protection if they returned. Foolishly, in February 1996, they all went back to Baghdad, where, after being ordered to divorce their wives, they were attacked in their house by their clan and killed after a twelve-hour shootout. The sisters blamed their brother Uday for the killing. Soon afterwards, Uday’s car was ambushed and he was wounded but survived. Blaming his sisters, he arrested them, claiming they had planned to kill him. Eventually Saddam restored some family order among his murderous spawn.

Saddam did not believe the Americans would attack him again. Like the Kims in North Korea, he felt vulnerable without weapons of mass destruction. A lifelong radical, he hated the supervision of the west, which he feared could embolden Iran. His policy was to destroy his weapons so as not to give America a pretext, while refusing to cooperate in order to maintain the menace towards Iran. It was the most catastrophic bluff in history.

Elated by the surgical American conquest of Afghanistan – the unipower at its maximal – Bush ordered the CIA to find the evidence of such weapons in Iraq. Meagre and misleading intelligence was soon sculpted to fit his policy, now backed by Tony Blair, the talented British prime minister. An attractive, well-spoken public-school boy and Oxford barrister, he disciplined his Labour party, possessing the encompassing charisma to win three elections on his own personal centre ground. He and Bush had little in common, but they shared a Christian faith and missionary vision. Drawn to America at its plenitude, despite soaring opposition and suspicion about the dubious intelligence, Blair committed Britain to the war.