Was Saddam Rational?

For some damn assignment I regret taking, I have been reading a book called Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi. One of the authors' contentions is that Saddam Hussein was a reckless but essentially rational dictator who tried (successfully, with two glaring exceptions) to calculate the risks every time he made a major move. This is an idea that has surfaced here and there. Karen Kwiatkowski made a similar argument in a comment about the Iraq debate between Brink Lindsey and John Mueller in Reason a while back:

On recklessness, Iraq's behavior in the past has been not reckless, but extremely cautious, with Saddam always seeking to assure the outcome before committing forces. That's why he broached the subject of the Kuwait invasion with April Glaspy [sic.] in 1990 (before he did it), and why his assessment of his war against Iran in the 1980s would work. In both cases, he thought the U.S. was on his side (and in fact we indicated we were). Dictators also need wars to maintain and fuel crisis mode management and media control. Iraq has not been reckless in projecting power, but actually quite rational and thoughtful. That Saddam mistakes our messages doesn't make him irrational, just part of a larger global crowd trying to figure out what the U.S. really wants.

I shouldn't have to note that calling Saddam rational isn't the same as saying he's a nice guy. Anyway, the two glaring exceptions I mention above were the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War. I don't know whether to include this year's war as well, because I am not sure there is anything Saddam could have done to prevent it. Throughout the last two years, he responded to various stimuli in fairly predictable ways; other than fleeing the country it's not really clear there is any step he could have taken to prevent his own downfall. If there wasn't anything he could have done, will that make any difference for American efforts to get compliance from other state actors (since the obvious motivation in these cases is the promise that if you do what the U.S. wants you won't be punished)?