From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, February 27.

With us now, the journalist Steve Call, COL, one of the most knowledgeable people anywhere about America's tortured relationship with the Middle East.

After 9-11, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Ghost Wars, the Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet invasion to September 10th, 2001.

He wrote another book called The Bin Laden's, an Arabian family in the

American century, and one called Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power, among other books.

Steve was the Washington Post's first international investigative correspondent based in London.

He's also been managing editor of the Washington Post, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, president of the New

America Foundation Think Tank, and a New Yorker staff writer. He recently joined The Economist

as a senior editor, and now with America's relationship with the Middle East, again, a central

issue. He has a new book called The Achilles Trap, Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the origins of

America's invasion of Iraq. He also had a New Yorker article in December called A Ruinous War and

peacemaking in Gaza. So let's see what we can learn about,

how the history in his new book perhaps informs the current crisis. Steve, I always learn

things reading your work. And when you come on the show, welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you, Brian. It's great to be back.

Just to set the stage about the book first, what does the title mean, the Achilles Trap?

Well, it refers to the deep misunderstandings of between Saddam Hussein and the United States

that unfolded between when Saddam first came to power in

1979 and the invasion that the U.S. led in 2003.

That particular phrase reflects the fact that both Saddam and the United States used the

Achilles' heel metaphor to explain why their enemy was vulnerable when in fact both of

them had kind of mistaken ideas about their enemy. But the real kind of starting point for the

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