The next few weeks may witness the end of Saddam Hussein's rule, and perhaps his life. Every morning, in his office in Baghdad, he reads summaries of the foreign press telling of US and British forces mustering against him. But he has always been an optimist.

President Saddam once told King Hussein of Jordan he considered every extra day of life a gift from God since he narrowly escaped with his life in 1959, after trying to assassinate the Iraqi President, Abd al-Karim Qassim. "I consider myself to have died that day," he said.

Despite his smoking and drinking, President Saddam has always made a fetish of physical health. In the past few days, he has ordered overweight army officers and officials to forfeit half their salaries if they fail an annual fitness test. He also ordered officials of the ruling Ba'ath Party caught gambling to be jailed for three years.
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Saddam has long had a strong sense of his own mission. He sees himself as the latest in a long line of Iraqi and Arab rulers from Nebuchadnezzar to Saladin. At the height of the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, when resources were short, he even started to rebuild the ruins of ancient Babylon using unpleasant, mustard-coloured bricks, each with his name imprinted on it.

One of the most extraordinary architectural excesses of the Iraqi leader is the monument in Baghdad celebrating "victory" over Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. It is the Iraqi Arc de Triomphe. Two metal forearms, modelled on those of the Iraqi leader, each 12m long, reach out of the ground, clutching steel sabres, whose tips cross, forming an arch under which the Iraqi Army often marches.

These symbols of President Saddam's personality cult have led to doubts about his ability to reach rational decisions. He has committed two catastrophic political errors by overplaying his hand. The first was in 1980 when he attacked Iran, believing it would be an easy victim. By the time it ended eight years later, 670,000 Iraqis were dead, wounded or prisoners.

It was a costly war, but Iraq, thanks to help from the US, Soviet Union and most of the world, came out marginally ahead. Two years later he invaded Kuwait, leading to a confrontation with the US and its allies which he could not possibly win.
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But the dictator has also been at his most effective when staring defeat in the face, in 1982 against Iran, and in 1991 against the US. Queried in an interview about a purge of the Iraqi military during the Iran-Iraq war, he gave the less than reassuring reply: "Only two divisional commanders and the head of a mechanised unit have been executed. That's quite normal in war."

In recent months he has taken precautions to guard against another rebellion among Iraq's Shia Muslims, such as that which almost unseated him in 1991. Iraqi security forces have maps of every city district and village where loyalties are dubious. Houses thought to harbour families hostile to the regime are marked in red, those whose allegiance is doubtful in black.
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In reality, Saddam is from a Sunni Arab family (the Sunni have traditionally ruled Iraq) with just the right connections to propel him to the front of Iraqi politics. He was born in Ouija, a typical Iraqi village of mud-brick houses outside the city of Tikrit, in the plains of northern Iraq on 28 April, 1937. His father, Hussein al-Majid, was a peasant farmer who died just before his son was born or a few months afterwards. He was brought up by his mother Subha al-Tulfah, a strong woman, and two uncles.
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His has always been a minority regime, dominated by Sunni Arabs who were only a fifth of the population. Most Iraqis are Shia and Kurds who have always been marginalised. Saddam relied on his security services, his family, his tribal connections, the Ba'ath Party and the army. He successfully ensured nobody else could rise to power as he had and stage a military coup.
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Now there is a growing belief in Iraq that a war is coming and Saddam will be overthrown. But there is also caution because Iraqis have vivid memories of how the US suddenly called a ceasefire in 1991. Many fear it might happen again.

"Nobody will do anything until the first American tank is on Iraqi soil," one Shia dissident said.

Saddam will also try to persuade Iraqis that they are about to become the victims of a neo- colonial adventure, the objective of which will be to subjugate them and steal their oil.

This may not work because Iraqis are tired, poor and want to see the president gone almost regardless of the motives of those who eject him.

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