This is not a 'warblog' - others like Little Green Footballs do a far better job. But then I just finished reading 'Saddam's Bombmaker' and I'm partway through 'The Threatening Storm'. Brrrr!
Saddam's Bombmaker is a chilling story of Dr. Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi who unwittingly made a deal with the devil when he accepted scholarships to study nuclear physics in the US. While he was gone Saddam Hussein took power and demanded that he returned home to avoid reprisals against his family.
From there he wound up involved in the Iraqi program to build nuclear weapons, and he tells how the program got started. It seems that in the early 1970's, some people wanted their budget increased, so they proposed building A-bombs. They figured it would take years to do it, by which time Saddam might be out of power.
Over time Hamza came to know much about other Iraqi weapons programs, and by the time of his nerve-wracking escape from Iraq in 1994 he had an earful for the CIA. Getting them to listen was another story (as Aukai Collins could have told him - Collins has a book of his own called 'My Jihad' that is also on my mile-long reading list). Enough, just read the book.
And when you're through with those, there's Glenn Frazier's Warblogger's Bookshelf
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