From A Time of Our Choosing : It was 4 a.m. when the two men arrived in the empty darkness of downtown. They carried a letter from the president, bearing his signature and authorizing a large transaction. They gave no reason. They did not have to. No questions were asked. Soon enough, Qusay Saddam Hussein, the president's second son, and Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Saddam's personal assistant, were overseeing the loading of 236 boxes into three tractor-trailers outside Iraq's Central Bank.

A team of workers took two hours to finish the job. Bank employees were meticulous, good bureaucrats to the end. They kept records of every batch of bills, then placed a packing slip enumerating the contents into each box before it was sealed. Over the years, Saddam and his family would sometimes demand cash from Iraqi banks. "Small amounts, maybe $5 million," one official said. This withdrawal was something else again. The total haul: almost $1 billion. There was $900 million in $100 bills and perhaps $100 million worth of euros, about a quarter of the country's hard-currency reserves, enough to rank as one of the largest bank robberies in history.

Then again, Saddam's power was so absolute that this seizure might have broken no laws. What was the money for? Where was it going? No one may ever know. But on that early spring morning, Saddam Hussein, president for life of the Republic of Iraq, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Central Leader of the Ba'ath Party, and Great Uncle to the fearful populace he had ruled for almost a quarter century surely knew this: far away in Washington, the president of the United States had given him and his sons just forty-eight hours to surrender power and leave their country-or face war.