Pamela Hess has posted a story with the Associated Press on interviews done with Saddam Hussein during his last days in custody. Particularly illuminating to me was the discussion on the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, and why he allowed the international community to believe he had them.
Leading up the invasion, the Bush administration used WMDs as the driving reason for toppling Hussein in 2003. At the time, I believed along with the rest of America that Hussein had WMDs, was a threat to the US (particularly with alleged connections to al Qaeda), and should be removed. Accounts from within the Bush administration have long insisted that the decision to invade Iraq had been made sans WMD evidence for the purposes of asserting US dominance in the region, but WMDs were nonetheless the driving reason that Bush used to gather public opinion for the war. Bush made a show of the potentiality of staying the invasion if only Hussein would allow weapons inspectors to view the alleged chemical and nuke sites. I assume I was believing the same as most people, when I felt at the time that Hussein had to have those weapons. I mean, if all he has to do to remain in power is allow weapons inspectors in (when he claims he has no weapons), then why not let them in and retain his position of power. So it was really confusing to us when he had practically nothing except a few leftover barrels of chemicals from the 90s.
Naturally, this was a big topic for his interrogators. Excerpts from the AP story (note: “Piro” is an FBI agent charged with Hussein’s interrogation):
In a series of interviews between February and June of 2004, Saddam also told Piro that he falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, which Iraq fought in a ruinous, eight-year war in the 1980s that involved the use of chemical weapons.
Saddam denied having unconventional weapons before the U.S. invasion but refused to allow U.N. inspectors to search his country from 1998 until 2002. The inspectors returned to the weapons hunt in November 2002 but still complained that Iraq was not cooperating.
“By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the United States,” he told Piro.
…
Piro had described the discussions with the Iraqi dictator in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” last year. Saddam told him he had “miscalculated” Bush’s intentions and expected only a limited U.S. attack.
“Hussein stated Iraq could have absorbed another U.S. strike, for he viewed this as less of a threat than exposing themselves to Iran,” according to a June 11, 2004, FBI interview report.
It makes only too much sense in hindsight. The US had been threatening Hussein for over a decade, and only ever tossing a few cruise missiles his way. We had bluffed for a decade, and faced with two countries he had gone to war with in the past (Iran and the US), Hussein miscalculated that Iran was the more pressing threat, and he oriented his international policy accordingly. For me, this is yet another example of how easy it for conflict to erupt from a basic lack of assumption that people generally act as rationally as possible, even those we label “madmen” or “Islamo-facists.” While far from justifying Hussein, he was simply doing the best he could with the information available to him. His miscalculation was in failing to differentiate between the paths the old Clinton administration and the new Bush administration would take.
Regarding his alleged connection to al Qaeda and bin Laden:
In the interviews, Saddam dismissed Osama bin Laden as a “zealot” and said he had never personally met the al-Qaida leader. He said the Iraqi government did not cooperate with the terrorist group against the U.S.…
…
Saddam also stated that the United States used the Sept. 11 terrorist attack as a justification to attack Iraq and said the U.S. had “lost sight of the cause of 9/11.” He claimed that he denounced the attack in a series of editorials.
My opinion of Osama bin Laden is that he is a “true believer,” but I could be wrong. My opinion of Saddam Hussein has always been that he used Islam as a PR front. Apparently, in that part of the world, politicians use religion to manipulate the public support of those in their charge. Thank God it’s not like that here. Nevertheless, this bit on bin Laden points to our failure to differentiate between enemy motivations. We see the common connection of Islam between bin Laden and Hussein, and it’s so easy to jump to concluding both are just motivated by a desire to see the US fall because they are crazy, hell-bent Islamo-fascists or whatnot. I’m anything but an apologist for the two, but with both bin Laden and Hussein, I believe this is a gross misunderstanding of the motives of both. I think we have seen enough sources to say that bin Laden wants Islamic renewal (a taking back of Arabia for God), and Hussein just wanted to keep his niche of power in the desert. Both men miscalculated the US, and we returned the favor of miscalculation.
Oops.
