I'm a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, Israel. I'm a prolific author and editor of several books and dozens of scholarly articles on Saddam Hussein and Iraqi politics and history. I testified about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction in September 2002 before the House Committee on Government Reform, and has consulted widely about Iraq with senior U.S. administration officials.I have been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, Georgetown University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, St. Antony's College (Oxford), and Hebrew University's School for Advanced Studies.I directed the Jewish-Arab Center and the Gustav Heinemann Middle East Institute at the University of Haifa from 1999 to 2002. I received his Ph.D. from the department of the history of Islamic countries at Hebrew University.