Though already the strongman for several years in the Ba’thist regime that took power in 1968, he assumed the Presidency—replacing Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, cousin of his uncle—only in 1979 in the course of a purge in which many members of the Ba’thist party were executed. In order to assure that the imprisoned Ba’thists provided the appropriate confessions before their executions, Saddam Hussein took some of their families hostage. By 1979, he had already long since come to be seen as a shaqawah, an implacable tough, a man to be feared. He was ruthless and emotionless when it came to those he
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