AMONG contemporary tyrants, Saddam Hussein ranked among the most brutal until the dawn hanging ended his life just as the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, began. Not only was he responsible for the deaths of perhaps as many as two million people, including his own countrymen, he held power throughout his reign by wielding a savagely primitive tribal feudalism on a massive scale. His tools were treachery, betrayal, revenge and assassination and they kept him in power in Iraq for more than 30 years. Though the 69-year-old was executed after his...