
The Achilles Trap
Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
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Narrated by:
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Malcolm Hillgartner
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By:
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Steve Coll
About this listen
“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times
“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post
"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air Mail
From bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons?
The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam’s motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader—a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances of his paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies—even when the stakes were incredibly high.
Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it.©2024 Steve Coll (P)2024 Penguin Audio
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Critic reviews
“[M]agisterial . . . The Achilles Trap’s virtues don’t derive so much from its counterfactuals as its ironies. Saddam Hussein lecturing the Arab world about strong men having their Achilles’ heel is ironic. So is the United States naming its covert regime-change program DB ACHILLES. What’s even more ironic is their juxtaposition. In the age of the Internet meme, one is hard-pressed not to think of the two Spider-Men pointing fingers at each other.”—The Nation
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Story
With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to many events.
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Unveiling the darkness of the Middle East
- By Matty D on 02-18-20
By: Kim Ghattas
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The Perfect Weapon
- War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
- By: David E. Sanger
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents - Bush and Obama - drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal.
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mix of information and propaganda
- By Inthego on 06-14-19
By: David E. Sanger
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Inside Qatar
- Hidden Stories from the World’s Richest Nation
- By: John McManus
- Narrated by: Frazer Blaxland
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Just 70 years ago, the Gulf nation of Qatar was a backwater, reliant on pearl diving. Today it is a gas-laden parvenu with seemingly limitless wealth and ambition. Skyscrapers, museums and futuristic football stadiums rise out of the desert and Ferraris race through the streets. But in the shadows, migrant workers toil in the heat for risible amounts. Inside Qatar reveals how real people live in this surreal place, a land of both great opportunity and great iniquity.
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The excellent prose
- By Dorothy on 08-18-24
By: John McManus
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Red Line
- The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World
- By: Joby Warrick
- Narrated by: Barrett Leddy
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2012, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, Pres. Obama warned that doing so would cross “a red line”. Assad did it anyway, killing hundreds of civilians and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular war. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out. So begins an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war.
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An excellent story for Three Quarters of the Book
- By D. MacLean on 05-11-21
By: Joby Warrick
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The Afghanistan Papers
- A Secret History of the War
- By: Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: Defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off-course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.
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Eye-Opening Book
- By David J Ray on 09-01-21
By: Craig Whitlock, and others
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Saudi, Inc.
- The Arabian Kingdom's Pursuit of Profit and Power
- By: Ellen R. Wald PhD
- Narrated by: Paul Ansdell
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Over more than a century, fed by ambition and oil wealth, al Saud (as the royal family is known) has come from having next to nothing to ruling as absolute monarchs. Their story starts with Saudi Arabia's founder, the lowly refugee Abdul Aziz, embarking on a daring gambit to reconquer his family's ancestral home: the mud-walled city of Riyadh. And it ends with al Saud's most ambitious move yet: taking Aramco, the multinational business that has made them the wealthiest family in the world, public.
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Excellent modern history of Saudi Arabia
- By Rob Hafen on 05-31-18
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Cowboys Over Iraq
- Leadership from the Saddle
- By: Jimmy Blackmon, General David H. Petraeus US Army - Ret. - foreword
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Cowboys Over Iraq tells the amazing story of leadership, innovation, initiative, and a brotherhood that was forged in the crucible of combat during the invasion of Iraq.
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goog story
- By J K. on 05-31-25
By: Jimmy Blackmon, and others
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The Terror Years
- From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer, Lawrence Wright
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.
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Contains much old material from "Looming Tower"
- By peter on 09-21-16
By: Lawrence Wright
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No Good Men Among the Living
- America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes
- By: Anand Gopal
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America's war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent, a U.S.-backed warlord who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power, and a village housewife trapped between the two sides who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality.
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Outstanding book, remarkable narrator
- By captainramius on 04-05-19
By: Anand Gopal
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Means of Control
- How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
- By: Byron Tau
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring.
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Political biased for absolutely no reason
- By Red on 09-28-24
By: Byron Tau
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Inside the Kingdom
- Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
- By: Robert Lacey
- Narrated by: Robert Lacey
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Robert Lacey tells us what happened in the Middle East's oil-rich powerhouse---while we weren't looking.
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Inside the Kingdom
- By Ibrahim on 03-19-10
By: Robert Lacey
From the Saddam’s Point of View.
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Revealing history; excellent performance
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Very well written. Throughly explained
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Excellent
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The story, often untold is detailed and in depth.
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A fascinating representation of never before told history that has shaped the middle east.
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Inside you of US politics with Iraq
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Steve does it again !!!
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Excellent Information and Narrator
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Odyssey of a story
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