Thread: Saddam Hussein 'lied about WMDs to protect Iraq from Iran'

The significant difference here is that these FBI transcripts are now made public.

Here is another public commentry about this. This one has information and insights that are not in the earlier SKY quote.

In these important interviews/conversations, it was felt FBI could do a better job than CIA, and the former selected someone with good experience gathering court statements.

Why Saddam Hussein lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction

2 July [CSMonitor] Saddam Hussein encouraged the perception that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because he was afraid of appearing weak in Iran’s eyes, according to nearly two dozen declassified transcripts of an FBI agent’s conversations with the former Iraqi dictator released Wednesday. ...

Among the findings, ... :

* Hussein criticized Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as a “zealot,” denied meeting him in Sudan in 1994, and said his country and the international terrorist franchise “did not have the same belief or vision.”

* Iraq would have been more likely to cooperate with China or North Korea, with which Hussein claimed to have a relationship. But his first choice would have been to seek a security agreement with the US to protect Iraq against regional threats.

* Iraq had complied with all UN resolutions regarding nuclear weapons by 1998. The main reason Hussein would not let UN inspectors return after kicking them out was that he was afraid Iran would learn from them where to strike Iraq.

* Hussein reluctantly reversed that decision after the British government prepared a report with inaccurate intelligence. “It was this inaccurate intelligence on which the United States was making their decisions,” says the transcript.

Mr. Piro, one of about 50 Arabic speakers among the FBI’s 10,000 agents, coaxed this information out of Hussein over the course of nearly a year – during which, he says, the dictator came increasingly to rely on him emotionally.

According to CBS, Piro listened to Hussein read poetry he’d written – a daily exercise for the former dictator, who had always carefully carved out time to read fiction when he was running Iraq. He gave Hussein the baby wipes the “clean freak” ruler loved to use to clean his cell and wipe off fresh fruit. The FBI agent celebrated Hussein’s birthday with cookies from his mother. He gave Hussein flower seeds, which he cultivated in a tiny garden with his bare hands. Slowly, the relationship began to yield fruit.

When Piro gave a lengthy interview to CBS’s 60 minutes in January 2008, his boss – FBI Assistant Director Joe Persichini – called the interviews with Hussein “one of the top accomplishments of our agency in the last 100 years.”

The FBI was asked, it said in statement, to brief Hussein because of the agency’s “longstanding work in gathering statements for court.” ...

This is nothing new. The Iraqi Perspectives Report has been part of the public domain for 4-5 years now with the exact same info.

Originally Posted by Shek

This is nothing new. The Iraqi Perspectives Report has been part of the public domain for 4-5 years now with the exact same info.

Shhh, don't disrupt the narrative......

The moral lesson of this story is "don't lie."

Honestly, a person like Saddam had it coming. He pushed against Iran, got hit in the nose. He pushed against Kuwait, got shot in the leg. He pushed the West in the 90s...he got his hair fried. He pushed again...and---off with his head!

The Telegraph article said "The transcripts, released under a freedom of information request, both undermined the Bush case for war, which was based on the threat of WMD and alleged Iraqi links to al-Qaeda..."

Does anyone believe the transcripts "undermined" Bush's case for war?

Bush argued for war before Saddam's deception became clear.

oscar,

US was just out to get him, I'm not sure he would have saved his own ass no matter what he would have done.

that was true only after roughly september 2002.