Sadam's sinister principle

In the evil firmament of 20th century dictators, Saddam Hussein's dark star stands out a little off to one side from the constellation of Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. Dreadful monsters that these men were, at least there was a twisted ideology behind their atrocities.

What were Saddam's motives for seeking power, making war on his neighbours, making his own nation a slave to internal terror, building weapons capable of mass slaughter and now bringing the planet to the brink of World War Three? Was he driven by a desire to drag his country, once locked in a medieval cycle of poverty and ignorance, into the modern world? Not really.

Is he now driven to defend the Ba'ath Party's dreams - of a secular, neo-socialist, pan-Arab nation knitted together with every country in the Middle East from Cairo to Kuwait - against Western imperial aggression? Nope.

Has he ruled for nigh on 30 years out of a Mobutuist lust for hard cash and luxury? Non.

Con Coughlin doesn't spell out Saddam's motives in such crude terms. But in Saddam: The Secret Life, the latest biography of a peasant woman's son turned president, Coughlin chillingly reveals that Saddam has no motives.

Iraq's supreme egomaniac, whose image adorns almost every wall and street corner in what was the cradle of civilisation, is a classic psychopath.

He was abandoned by his father early in life. His mother, Subha Tulfa, was left to bring up Saddam and his younger brother, Siham, as a single parent.

Locals in the Al-Ouja village where he grew up sneered that Saddam was the illegitimate son of a whore. In a community best known for thieving, robbery and violence, it was inevitable that the strapping, but shy, Saddam would fight, or fade away.

He fought, and fought. Taken in by his uncle, Saddam eventually found a home in the Ba'ath Party. This was not an ideological sanctuary, rather an organisation which could use his special talents for cold-blooded murder, assassination and subterfuge. In the end, most of those who used Saddam to get power for the party in the 1968 coup would die at his hands.

In 1979, when he took over as President, he called a meeting of top party officials, lit a Cuban cigar and read out a list of names. Men who had been his closest friends, jailhouse confidantes and co-conspirators, stood up, their heads bowed, as they were led away to their deaths. Those who were left behind were made to take part in the executions.

Saddam's entire career has been built on just one principle - to get into power and stay there. This was obvious in the early 1960s, when, Coughlin suggests, he had contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency, which may have protected him in prison and quietly aided his ascent to power as an alternative to feared Soviet dominance in the region.

This foolish scheme continued into the 1980s, when Iraq was locked in a pointless and murderous war with Iran (land of the Mad Mullahs) and the West - Britain, France, Germany-and, of course, the USA - backed Saddam all the way. While he enveloped the Kurds and Iranians in nerve and mustard gas, raced ahead with a programme to build a nuke, and massacred his own people, we were his cheerleaders in chief.