Byline: Kate Bolick

When Saddam Hussein was captured two years ago, Zainab Salbi witnessed the event along with the rest of the world: on a television monitor. But she saw more than a fallen despot emerging from a hole in the dirt. Behind that untamed beard she recognized the man who, as she knew from spending her adolescence within his most intimate circles, smelled of cologne, carried boxes of Chivas Regal to parties, and suffused every room he entered with "fear incarnate." Today Salbi enjoys a global reputation for her social activism as the founder of the nonprofit organization Women for Women International, but in Iraq she's known as the daughter of one...