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By Root 1113 0

geographically, philosophically it was another world. While my father spoke with Saddam in the main hall of the Republican Palace, I waited outside in a courtyard with Qusay and his brother-in-law, Hussein Kamel. They were smoking and in high spirits. By then I was a major in the army. I told Qusay and Hussein Kamel that I had just completed Staff College in England and had a pretty good sense of how NATO armies operated, particularly with airpower. I said I did not think the Iraqis had the capability to stop the coalition forces and asked them how they would survive a multipronged attack. By then it was clear that most Arab leaders would join the international coalition that the United States and the UK were building to take on Iraq.

The Iraqi leadership was isolated from the wider world, and as can often be the case in dictatorships, nobody wanted to tell the leader that his ideas were faulty. So Saddam’s sons had a greatly overinflated—and unrealistic—perception of their military strength.

“We can detect their stealth bombers!” Qusay said triumphantly. “Morale is very high; we want war.” Both men went on to tell me about new types of artillery they had developed, secret radar systems and 20,000-pound bombs. None of it made much sense.

“I’m telling you,” I said, “from what I learned in England, you guys don’t stand a chance.” They did not react. They had tremendous national pride but had badly underestimated the capabilities of their adversary. It was the kind of hubris that can (and soon did) cause the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

Shortly after our conversation, my father emerged from the conference hall looking upbeat, and we returned to Amman. The next day, on December 6, 1990, Saddam announced that he would free the hostages. But the preparations for war rumbled on.

Around the New Year, I regularly get together with a group of close friends from the United States and other countries—it has become an annual tradition. That year, given the likelihood of an imminent war on our border, I was not sure any of my friends from outside Jordan would want to come.

As my family and I tried to retain a semblance of normalcy, I could see that my father was exhausted; he was on the phone all day with the Americans, Saddam Hussein, and the Kuwaitis, trying desperately to talk them back from the brink. A few friends and I decided we would try to lift his spirits. We searched through my father’s house at Hummar, and inside an old chest we found a collection of photographs of my father with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the British general Sir John Glubb, and many other historic figures. My father looked through the photos while the family gathered around. He gave us an impromptu history lesson, describing what was going on in Jordan at the time each photograph was taken and telling us about these historical figures, their personalities, and the various conflicts he had lived through.

On New Year’s Eve that year I was in the Jordan Valley with my friend Gig, who came to visit along with some other American friends despite the protests at home. We talked about our families and the old days back at Deerfield, but most of our conversation focused on the impending war with Iraq and what it might mean for Jordan. If things went badly, would Jordan become the enemy in American eyes? The U.S. Army’s 229th Squadron of the 101st Airborne Division, where I had learned to fly Cobra helicopters, had been deployed to Iraq, and it was shocking to think that we might soon be on opposite sides. I was a Jordanian and Gig was an American, but our friendship was stronger than politics.

By January 1991, over half a million troops from a coalition led by the United States and the UK, joined by some thirty other countries, were deployed in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf. Opposing them was Saddam’s army, at around a million strong the largest in the region and the fourth largest in the world. Iraq had obtained weapon systems from all over the world and had been battle-hardened by its long war with Iran, so it was by no means sure that the impending