Rating: 
Summary: Inside the Nightmare
Review: This is a terrific book on several levels. First,it's a riveting account of life inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a country run on fear, and a chilling look at his campaign to develop nuclear weapons -- an arsenal that he intends to use someday. But the book is also a deeply personal story of Dr. Hamza's journey out of madness. This is a fascinating tale, rich in detail, about his evolution from the dictator's most important scientist to a whistleblowing defector whose warnings about Saddam's plans are only now gaining the audience they deserve. But no dry academic tome or meditative memoir here -- this is a well-written, fast-paced thriller with a surprising twist or turn around every corner. The account of Hamza's flight to freedom, complete with dueling dissident groups, bumbling secret agents and dangerous border crossings, fairly crackles off the page and by itself is worth the price of admission. One other point: another reviewer in these pages expressed some skepticism about Dr. Hamza's story. This was more than a little puzzling. Dr. Hamza has been vetted by the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, all of which have attested to his bona fides. I wonder whether Dr. Hamza, having survived the terrors of Saddam's regime and lived to tell his story, will now face an assault on his credibility from sources whose own motives are open to question. All in all, a great read that you'll think about -- and talk about -- long after the book is back on the shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: thought provoking book
Review: Um, guys? Isn't this the guy who testified with David Kay to Congress about "Saddam's nuclear program?" So, um, now we know there was no program, right? Which the CIA knew years ago, when Saddam's son-in-law defected. So this book is, what exactly? And how stupid are the reviewers below? "Reads like a spy novel" indeed. Apparently, this guy is still on the taxpayer's payroll, in charge of "re-educating" Iraqi scientists.
Rating: 
Summary: A Combination of Fact and Fiction
Review: When I read this book about six months before we invaded Iraq, I believed that the book was an accurate portrayal of Iraq's nuclear program. We now know that much of the book is fictional and propaganda. Another former Iraqi scientist now in Canada, Imad Khadduri, relates that Khidhir Hamza, "the self-claimed Iraqi atomic "Bomb Maker." Given a short lived assignment in the Iraqi nuclear program in 1987 to lead the atomic bomb design team, he was kicked out a few months later for petty theft. Reduced to a non-entity in the accelerated nuclear weapons program between 1987 and the start of the 1991 war, he retired from the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in 1989 and became a college lecturer, a stock market swindler and a shady business middle-man." Therefore, he would have had no direct knowledge of Iraq's nuclear program after 1989. Obviously his claim in the book that there were extensive underground nuclear facilities in Iraq has not been validated.
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