At the end of the Gulf War, the White House was confident that Saddam Hussein's days as Iraq's dictator were numbered. His army had been routed, his country had been bombed back into a pre-industrial age, his subjects were in bloody revolt, and his borders were sealed. World leaders waited confidently for the downfall of the pariah of Baghdad. Almost a decade later, they are still waiting.

This is the first in-depth account of what went wrong. Drawing on the authors' firsthand experiences on the ground inside Iraq (often under fire) and their interviews with key players--ranging from...