In The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq, bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, tracks the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein in 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. The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq. Drawing on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll pulls together an incredibly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.

Join New America's Future Security Program as they welcome Steve Coll, to discuss his new book The Achilles Trap. Coll is also the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ghost Wars, a professor and dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and from 2007 to 2013 was president of New America. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and previously worked for twenty years at The Washington Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1990.

Join the conversation online using #AchillesTrap and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Steve Coll

Author, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq

Dean Emeritus, Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University

Former President, New America

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen

Vice President, New America

Co-Director, Future Security

Professor of Practice, Arizona State University