i8. Saddam Hussein: Beliefs and
Integrative Complexity
The profiles of Saddam Hussein in this chapter focus on his beliefs
and integrative complexity during different periods of his tenure as
the leader of Iraq. The content and structure of his cognitions are two
aspects of the process of object appraisal, which both represent real-
ity and express the leader's personality. In the following sections of
this chapter, the authors identify diagnostic and choice propensities
in Hussein's operational code and examine the integrative complex-
ity of his thought processes to assess their likely impact on the Iraqi
leader's behavior.
Operational Code Beliefs and Object Appraisal
Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael YoungThe following analysis of Saddam Hussein's operational code is based
on a small sample of six speeches from public sources for three years
during the late 19905 (1996, 1998, 1999). Each speech was
machine-coded with Profiler+, an automated content analysis soft-
ware package using the VICS coding procedures described in chap-
ter 9 (see also Young 2001; Schafer and Walker 2001). The reliabil-
ity of the results is very high because the coding process was
automated and, therefore, perfectly reproducible. The following
analysis of Hussein's beliefs is in terms of their direction and inten-
sity compared to the average VICS scores for a normirig group of
twenty world leaders from different regions and eras.
The validity of the results is subject to the degree of generaliz-
ability from the sample to the population of speeches and other pub-
lic statements by the Iraqi leader. Since the sample does not cover an
extended time period, its generalizability is limited unless one
387