I read a two-page spread in the New York Times: a biography of Saddam Husayn by (the thin-skinned) NEIL MacFARQUHAR. What is striking about it that it does not make references to the support that Saddam was getting from Gulf governments and from Western governments for much of the 1970s and 1980s. It does not talk, for example, about the council that he established with Husni Mubarak, King Husayn, and the Yemeni president. And it quoted objective observers including Sa`d Bazzaz who is identified as "a writer and editor." Bazzaz was in charge of Saddam's propaganda for much of his rule until the 1991 war.