Why Didn't Saddam Hussein Come Clean And Just Admit He Had No WMDs?

An excerpt from a fascinating article by Mark Goldblatt:

Ever since American forces invaded, overran and occupied Iraq in 2003, and discovered no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the great lingering question about the war has been why Saddam Hussein would spend an entire decade acting as though he possessed WMDs when he didn’t. Since the ceasefire agreement he’d signed in 1991, in order to remain in power after the first Gulf War, obligated him to get rid of them, why would Saddam intentionally endure crippling United Nations sanctions as he jerked around, and finally ejected, weapons inspectors? Why wouldn’t he just come clean if he had nothing to hide?

The answer, according Ronald Kessler in his new book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, is that Saddam ultimately feared United Nations actions less than he feared an attack from Iran . . . which, he calculated, would be much more likely if the leaders of Iran knew he had no WMDs. Kessler based his conclusions on information obtained by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent named George Piro who debriefed and befriended Saddam after the dictator’s capture in Iraq, during his months of captivity before his eventual execution.

In retrospect, Saddam’s calculus looks altogether logical. He’d fought a brutal stalemated war against Iran in the 1980s and viciously persecuted Iraq’s Shiite majority out of fear they might align themselves with their Shiite neighbor. More alarming still, from Saddam’s standpoint, was the fact that his own military had been decimated by the 1991 conflict with the American led coalition. If Iran did attack, he had no chance in a conventional war.

Comments

[Maven]

Exactly what I told anyone who'd listen in 2003, *before* we invaded Iraq. Of course, I don't know anyone in government, so my thoughts don't count for much, but surely there were others thinking the same thing, in a position to influence policy?

[Alison]

Just consider this: Would an FBI agent have been allowed to reveal information that would cause serious embarrassment to the US government? Of course not! Kessler confirms that Piro's account was vetted in advance by the Director of the FBI.

All this convoluted nonsense about Saddam having fooled the US into invading Iraq is just the latest official American cop-out. It is contradicted by Saddam's own public statements before and after the invasion. Saddam did not always co-operate fully with the UN weapons inspections teams during the 1990s because he knew they had been infiltrated by the CIA. Former UN Inspectors have confirmed that Iraq would have been given a clean bill of health in the mid 1990s had it not been for US pressure.

Other claims made in Piro's account are equally self-serving. How convenient that Saddam is no longer around to refute them!