Review Saddam Hussein The Politics Of Revenge

Aburish, Said, Saddam Hussein The Politics Of Revenge, Bloomsbury, 2000

 

Said Aburish’s Saddam Hussein The Politics Of Revenge is full of ups and downs. He makes some astute observations about Saddam’s assumption of power and the U.S. and U.K. policy of regime change in the 1990s. On the other hand, he was a Baathist sympathizer up to the 1980s having worked for the Iraqi government. Second, Aburish’s writing is full of Saddam gossip about his excesses. Most importantly almost all major issues are explained via Western conspiracies which robs Iraqis of any agency and responsibility throughout history. The problems with his writing end up undermining any good points the author might have made.

Review The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003

Stieb, Joseph, The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Deli, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2021

 

The majority of books on the Iraq invasion focus upon the early days of the Bush administration and then how 9/11 changed its perceptions and led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Few have analysis and most just recite the history. Joseph Stieb in The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003 is one of those rare releases which focuses upon the ideas that led the conflict with Iraq. It discusses how the first Bush administration created a containment policy around Iraq after the Gulf War and how that broke down in the 1990s so that by the time 9/11 happened the only real debate within the American political establishment was not whether to invade Iraq but how.

Review Iraq Confidential, The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein

Ritter, Scott, Iraq Confidential, The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein, New York: Nation Books, 2005

 

Iraq Confidential, The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein was former U.N. inspector Scott Ritter’s second book on his experiences working in Iraq. He claimed the United States undermined the inspection process from the start not supporting it, trying to manipulate it, and ultimately giving up on it. The problem is much of his story contradicts what he wrote in his first book Endgame, Solving The Iraq Crisis. That begs the question of which version is the reader supposed to believe?

Review Invisible War, The United States And The Iraq Sanctions

Gordon, Joy, Invisible War, The United States And The Iraq Sanctions, Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2010

 

If you want to learn about the United Nations sanctions on Iraq which lasted from 1990-2003 then Professor Joy Gordon’s Invisible War, The United States And The Iraq Sanctions should be on the top of your list. The U.S. wanted to use the sanctions to make sure Iraq could never rebuild its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and contain Saddam Hussein. Washington argued that it was Saddam’s fault that the sanctions lasted, that he abused the system, and that Iraq received all the basic necessities it needed all of which were false. In fact, U.S. policy devastated the people of Iraq and destroyed the economy.

Review Iraq, A Report From The Inside

Hiro, Dilip, Iraq, A Report From The Inside, London: Granta Books, 2003

 

This book got two releases. It was originally published as Iraq, In The Eye of the Storm in 2002. Then it switched publishers and came out as Iraq, A Report From The Inside the next year. There was absolutely no difference between the two other than the title. Dilip Hiro was one of the few people consistently writing about Iraq from the 1980s-2000s. This book covers the country from the Gulf War to just before the 2003 invasion. The two most interesting parts were the plots against Saddam and the U.N. inspections.

Review Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War

Bonin, Richard, Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday, 2011

 

Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War by 60 Minutes producer Richard Bonin was the second book on the controversial figure. Much of it is based upon conversations the author had with Chalabi. The book highlights his greatest achievement of helping to convince the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein to his many faults from his financial corruption to his turn towards sectarian politics. The book starts off giving Chalabi’s view of Iraq and then becomes more critical as it progresses.

Review Neighbors, Not Friends, Iraq And Iran After The Gulf Wars

Hiro, Dilip, Neighbors, Not Friends, Iraq And Iran After The Gulf Wars, London and New York: Routledge, 2001

 

Dilip Hiro was one of the few journalists who consistently covered Iraq from the 1980s to the 2000s. He wrote several books about the country including Neighbors, Not Friends, Iraq And Iran After The Gulf Wars. Half the book was about Iraq and the other half about Iran and their difficulties after their war with each other. Both faced deep economic problems and dealing with the United States. Saddam Hussein had to deal with a decades’ worth of sanctions and United Nations weapons inspections while Iran struggled with its economy and had a constant battle between the conservatives and reformers. These events are the basis of Hiro’s book.

Review Out Of The Ashes, The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein

Cockburn, Andrew and Cockburn, Patrick, Out Of The Ashes, The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, New York: Harper Perennial, 2000

Out Of The Ashes, The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein was written by the Cockburn brothers Andrew and Patrick. It covered Iraq in the 1990s starting with Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the Bush administration’s plots against Saddam to the United Nations sanctions and inspectors. The book goes back and forth between the hopes of the Bush and Clinton White Houses to overthrow and contain Saddam to his attempts to hold onto power, which proved quite successful. The Cockburns relied upon both press reports along with extensive interviews with Iraqis both inside and outside of the country to tell this story. As the title suggests, the authors believed that Saddam went from the depths of defeat to be comfortably in power during this decade, but at a heavy cost to his country.

Review The United States And Iraq Since 1990, A Brief History With Documents

Brigham, Robert, The United States And Iraq Since 1990, A Brief History With Documents, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014

The United States And Iraq Since 1990 by Robert Brigham was written as a short college textbook covering America’s long experience with Iraq. It covers four broad periods starting with the Bush administration and the Gulf War, then the Clinton administration, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and finally the American occupation. After each chapter there are a few primary source documents with questions about them. The book provides a good introduction to America’s Iraq policy, however there are some issues in the second half.

Chilcot Report Sec 1.1 UK Iraq Strategy 1990 To 2000

The Chilcott Inquiry was created to explain the decisions that led to England’s participation in the Iraq War. The first section covered the United Kingdom’s strategy towards Iraq from the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to 2000. London’s main concern during this period all the way to 2003 was Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and nuclear programs. British intelligence believed that Iraq was close to getting a nuclear bomb and had a large and active chemical and biological weapons arsenal. After the Gulf War, the UK committed itself to a containment policy that backed United Nations’ inspectors to destroy Iraq’s weapons programs and a no fly zone to deter any further aggression. This set the stage for Downing Streets’ Iraq strategy all the way up to 2003.

Revised Review Iraq, In the Eye of the Storm

Revised Review Hiro, Dilip, Iraq, In the Eye of the Storm, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002

Dilip Hiro was one of the few people consistently covering Iraq from the 1980s-2000s. Iraq In The Eye of the Storm covers the country from the Gulf War right up to before the 2003 invasion. Each chapter has a theme such as life for ordinary Iraqis under sanctions, the Iraqi opposition, the Kurds, the impact of 9/11, etc. The three most interesting parts were on the mid-1990s plots against Saddam, the coup proofing of the regime by Saddam, and the U.N. weapons inspections.

UN Inspectors and CIA Spying On Iraq In The 90s

On July 30, 2001, former U.N. weapons inspector chief Rolf Ekeus told Swedish Radio that the U.S. manipulated the inspections in the 1990s. Ekeus led the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) from 1991-97. He said that the U.S. spied upon the Iraqi security forces, tried to find the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, and wanted to create crises that would justify American military action against Baghdad. At first, the U.S. was interested in disarming Iraq, but a year into the process as Saddam continuously refused to cooperate Washington decided to exploit the regime for its own purposes.

Why Saddam Hussein Did Not See The United States As A Military Threat Before The 2003 Invasion

Iraq’s military confrontations with the United States largely shaped the Saddam Hussein’s view of America. Each time Iraq did something provocative in the 1990s the White House would usually respond with a few cruise missiles, which did not have much affect. The Iraqi dictator believed that the U.S. was therefore wed to air power rather than the use of its ground forces. America’s defeat in the Vietnam War, and its experience in Somalia and Serbia seemed to solidify Saddam’s opinion. For all of those reasons, Baghdad did not believe that the Bush administration was serious about going to war in 2003.

Saddam Hussein looked down upon the United States’ military might, seeing it as a paper tiger. He saw the American defeat in Vietnam as a sign of its weakness. Saddam pointed out that the U.S. lost 58,000 soldiers in that war, and then gave up, while Iraq lost 51,000 in just one battle for the Fao Peninsula in the Iran-Iraq War. He interpreted this to mean that the U.S. was afraid of taking casualties. The Clinton administration’s experience in Iraq, Serbia, and Somalia seemed to further prove Saddam’s point. In June 1993, Washington fired cruise missiles at the Iraqi Intelligence Service for an attempted assassination of former President George Bush. Then in October 1994, the U.S. sent forces to the Persian Gulf to deter Saddam’s deployment of 64,000 soldiers across the border with Kuwait to protest United Nations’ sanctions. In September 1996, the Americans launched Operation Desert Strike, which consisted of another cruise missile attack in response to an Iraqi offensive against the Kurds. Finally, in December 1998, Operation Desert Fox was a four-day missile and bombing campaign to punish Baghdad for refusing to work with United Nations’ weapons inspectors. Likewise, in Serbia, the Americans insisted on only using air power to achieve its goals. Finally, there was the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, which led to an American withdrawal. The Iraqi dictator took this all to mean that the U.S. was afraid to fight. That led him to believe that the U.S would never launch a serious invasion of Iraq to overthrow his government, because it would cost too many soldiers. In his opinion, Iraq had one of the strongest armies in the world since it was willing to take huge losses such as during the Iran-Iraq War. The United States on the other hand, lacked this wherewithal, and therefore would not take on Baghdad.  

When it became apparent to many in 2002 that the Bush administration was set upon invading Iraq, Saddam Hussein had the exact opposite opinion. He thought that the Americans and British were afraid of the strength of the Iraqis forces. In a February 2003 speech, he said that Iraq might lack the advanced equipment of the United States military, but its morale and beliefs were stronger, and that’s what mattered in war. To most of Iraq’s leadership, if something were to happen with America it would be like Operation Desert Fox, a series of air assaults or perhaps a seizure of southern Iraq like how the U.S. moved into Kurdistan after the 1991 Gulf War. The Director General of the Republican Guard’s General Staff for instance, told American interrogators after the war that he believed that the Coalition would take Basra, and perhaps Amarah in Maysan province, and then leave. Saddam thought that the Iraqi military would inflict such high casualties upon the Americans that they would withdraw if a war were to ever come. These seem like incomprehensible views, but they show the subjective nature of human reality. Iraq’s leadership looked at a series of events in American foreign policy, and they all seemed to point to the same thing. That was a military superpower that was afraid to use its ground forces, and over relied upon air power after Vietnam. When the new Bush administration came into office, and immediately singled out Iraq, Saddam didn’t think anything had changed strategically. After all, the previous Clinton administration had a series of confrontations with Baghdad, but nothing serious ever came of them. The Iraqis thought the same thing would happen with the new president.

Many foreign policy analysts and politicians believe that the majority of people act in a rational way. What they don’t understand is how worldviews vary from individual to individual creating a multitude of ways to act rationally. Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion was a perfect example. He operated in a bubble, but it was one partially based upon his analysis of American foreign policy. If the worst America could do was send a few cruise missiles after Iraq attempted to assassinate a former president, what was there to fear? Baghdad seemed to believe that the new Bush administration’s tough talk would not change America’s preference for using air power. Therefore there was not a real threat of an invasion. This was obviously a massive miscalculation, but one that could be explained by how Saddam and his followers viewed the United States.

SOURCES

Global Security, “Operation Desert Strike”

Pine, Art, “U.S., Iraq Move More Troops Toward Kuwait: Military: Baghdad mobilizes force of 64,000. Tension up as American ships, planes, 4,000 soldiers converge on Gulf,” Los Angeles Times, 10/9/04

Von Drehle, David and Smith, Jeffrey, “U.S. Strikes Iraq for Plot to Kill Bush,” Washington Post, 7/27/93

Woods, Kevin with Pease, Michael, Stout, Mark, Murray, Williamson, and Lacey, James, “A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam’s Senior Leadership,” Iraqi Perspectives Project, 3/24/06

How Operation Desert Fox Finished Off Iraq’s WMD Programs

In December 1998, the United States and England launched the largest attack upon Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. Dubbed Operation Desert Fox, the campaign turned out to be a short one of just four days of bombing and missile strikes. The cause was Saddam Hussein’s continued refusal to cooperate with the United Nations’ weapons inspectors, who withdrew from the country shortly before the operation started, and would not return again until the end of 2002. At the time, Desert Fox was highly controversial within the United States, because it came on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Many politicians and analysts derided the attack as being a diversion from American domestic politics, and ineffective due to its short duration, and because Iraq was left to operate with no inspectors in the country. Supporters said it almost caused a coup. After the fall of the regime, investigators found that the program ended Iraq’s hopes of rebuilding its chemical and biological weapons operations. In the end, Operation Desert Fox proved to have far more effects upon Iraq than initially thought.

In December 1998, President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced an air campaign against Iraq called Operation Desert Fox. U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said that the two countries would focus upon degrading Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, and its ability to project military power. Cohen went on to say that the strikes were meant to make Saddam Hussein comply with United Nations’ resolutions and weapons inspections. President Clinton went on television saying that Saddam had lost his last chance to cooperate with the U.N., and that he should be removed. Thus started the largest military operation against Iraq since the Gulf War. 

Some of the government targets struck in Baghdad during Desert Fox

The operation lasted just four days, starting on December 16. That night 250 Tomahawk missiles and 40 sorties by planes from the U.S.S. Enterprise struck Iraq. A total of 415 cruise missiles and 600 bombs were used against 100 targets, 97 of which were hit. 49 of the strikes were against elements of the government. That included three palaces in Baghdad, the offices of Abed Hamid Mahmoud, Saddam’s chief of staff, the Baath Party headquarters in the capital, the Mukhabarat intelligence agency offices, along with the Defense and Industry Ministries. Several military and domestic security agencies were hit as well including two corps and four division headquarters of the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard, the Secret Security Organization’s computer center and intelligence archives, a helicopter base in Samarra, and airfields in Baiji, Taji, and Kut. Eavesdropping and jamming facilities, telephone exchanges, radio and television transmitters in Baghdad and Basra were knocked out too. Iraq’s WMD and missiles sites were also targeted. That included the Biological Research Center at Baghdad University, which had been in the lead of the country’s biological weapons program, the Fallujah III and Habaniya Castor Oil plants both of which were believed to be behind the production of ricin, the missile research and development centers in Anbar and Ninewa, and liquid engine and missile fabrication sites. Two of the airbases struck were also believed to house drones that could be used to deliver WMD. The targets could be divided up into four distinct categories. First hit was the country’s air defense network, so that planes could operate safely over Iraq. Second, were the WMD facilities. Those were a combination of factories that produced components for biological and chemicals weapons and research labs. Third, was the missile industry. The West believed that missiles were the main way Saddam planned on delivering his WMD against other countries, so it went after the plants that produced parts for them. General Anthony Zinni, who was in charge of the operation, limited the number of WMD and missile sites to those that could be hit with certainty. Finally, were the government offices. These appeared to be aimed at denying Saddam the ability to maintain his totalitarian control over society, and put down any revolt that might follow Desert Fox. Helicopters for example, were used to suppress the 1991 uprisings by Shiites and Kurds following the Gulf War. The secret services, Republican Guard, and communication targets denied Baghdad the ability to collect information, give orders, spread propaganda, monitor the public, destroyed files on the population, and damaged the units that were supposed to protect the regime. All together they were meant to bring down Saddam.

The cause of Operation Desert Fox was Saddam’s continued skirting of United Nations’ resolutions about his weapons programs. From 1997-1998 Baghdad had tried to stifle inspections by clearing sites, hiding and destroying documents, and not allowing U.N. personnel into certain facilities. In February 1998, Iraq signed an agreement with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that was supposed to ease the process and allow inspectors into presidential sites, which were suspected repositories of secret papers. Then in July, a huge stash of documents was found at the Iraqi Air Force headquarters that covered chemical weapons used during the Iran-Iraq War. The Iraqis ended up seizing the files. The next month, Baghdad refused to cooperate with the inspectors, and they shut down their operations by October as a result. Saddam had come to believe that no matter what his government did, the inspections and U.N. sanctions would not end. By 1998 there was no real work on WMD anymore, and only missile development was still going on. The search by that point was mostly about finding documentation on the extent of Iraq’s programs. Saddam had tired of the entire process, and therefore found no reason to work with the inspectors anymore. The result, was that on December 15, they withdrew, opening the way for Operation Desert Fox in retaliation by the U.S. and England.

Many within the U.S. were critical of the attack. Republicans were in the forefront of criticizing the operation. For most of 1998, President Clinton had been entangled in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Some Republicans claimed that Desert Fox was a means to district the public from the scandal. Many also felt that the short duration of the attack accomplished little. Daniella Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute for instance, said Desert Fox did nothing. Richard Perle who had served in the Reagan administration said that Clinton was afraid to take firmer action against Saddam. Kenneth Pollack who was a former analyst from the CIA, and a member of the National Security Council at the time, later stated that Saddam came out on top, because the attack was severely limited, and inspectors had withdrawn. Charles Duelfer who was the head inspector later wrote that Desert Fox was “feckless,” and Iraq was free to continue with its WMD programs with no U.N. presence. Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote that the attack had no impact upon Saddam’s behavior, and made him look down upon the West’s military capabilities since he survived what the U.S. and England touted as the largest attack since the Gulf War. These statements were a mix of partisanship and analysis. By 1998, Republicans were attacking Clinton about everything, so it was no surprise they did the same about Desert Fox. Pollack, Duelfer, and Cordesman on the other hand, believed that four days of bombing could do little, and more importantly Saddam was given a free hand with no more weapons inspectors in his country. He could therefore hide his programs, and start new work if he wanted to with no outside interference. That was the popular opinion until after the 2003 invasion.

Gen. Zinni commander of Desert Fox believed that it almost led to a revolt against Saddam (Wikipedia)

General Zinni was much more positive about the campaign he had just commanded. The General knew that any military strike could only have limited impact upon the WMD program. Since some precursors, agents, and weapons could be made in small rooms, there was no way to eliminate those elements. What Zinni would later point out, was that the strike caused fear of a coup. In January 1999, the general said that Saddam was executing officers, and rounding up dissenters out of fear of an uprising. His ability to dominate society had been weakened by striking communication, intelligence, and internal security offices. To Zinni, the operation therefore almost brought down the regime.

Investigations after the 2003 invasion of Iraq found that Operation Desert Fox had mixed impacts upon Saddam’s weapons programs. In terms of missiles, Iraq was able to work on them more after the inspectors left. The Iraq Survey Group that was tasked with finding Iraq’s WMD, discovered that Baghdad sped up its missile program after Desert Fox, and attempted to use loopholes in sanctions to acquire more technology and parts. In terms of WMD however, the opposite was found. The Iraqi Survey Group discovered that Desert Fox ended the last vestiges of the country’s operations. Afterward, the various networks were allowed to atrophy and die. Iraq realized that it would never be able to restart its programs like before on a large scale with sanctions still in place, and fazed them out. David Kay, who was the first director of the Survey Group was surprised by the interviews he did with Iraqis when they talked about the impact of Desert Fox, because he had long been critical of the operation. Kay passed on his findings to Congress in October 2003. Overall, Desert Fox proved to be far more effective then initially thought. One of the stated goals of the operation was to degrade Iraq’s weapons programs. It turned out that the strike was the last straw, and WMD work largely ceased afterward, even though missile development continued.

Operation Desert Fox was widely derided for years, but turned out to have a far larger impact upon Iraq than most critics believed. Only lasting four days, many analysts doubted that it could have much affect upon Saddam Hussein. After all, he was still in power, and many thought that with inspectors no longer in the country, Iraq would restart its weapons programs. As it turned out, Iraq had destroyed most of its WMD stockpiles, and was largely trying to hide the extent of its programs from the outside world by 1998. Desert Fox convinced the regime that the U.S. was intent on maintaining sanctions to contain the government, and there was no way for it to rebuild its WMD effort as a result. Those operations ended, with only some small-scale work on toxins for assassinations left. This was not known until after 2003 however when Saddam was overthrown, and outside experts were able to go through all of Iraq’s documents, and interview its personnel. Even though Desert Fox was very limited in scope, it came at just the right time in the history of the Saddam regime to put an end to its weapons of mass destruction.

SOURCES

Arkin, William, “The Difference Was in the Details,” Washington Post, 1/17/99

Cirincione, Joseph, “The Kay Contradiction,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 10/3/03

Cirincione, Joseph, Mathews, Jessica, Perkovich, George with Orton, Alexis, “WMD in Iraq Evidence and Implications,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

CNN, “Pentagon unveils details of Operation Desert Fox,” 12/16/98

Conversino, Dr. Mark, “Operation DESERT FOX: Effectiveness With Unintended Effects,” Air & Space Power Journal, 7/13/05

Duelfer, Charles, “Canaries in the Cooling Tower,” The National Interest, July/August 2009

Haulman, Daniel, “What Happened to the Iraqi Air Force?” Air Force Historical Research Agency, 11/5/09

Iraq Survey Group, “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCIA on Iraq’s WMD,” 9/30/04

Leopold, Jason, “Seven Months Before 9/11 Said Iraq Posed No Threat,” Scoop, 6/27/03

PBS Frontline, “Chronology: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

- “In Their Own Words: Who Said What When,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03

- “Interview: Kenneth Pollack,” The War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

- “The War Behind Closed Doors – Transcript,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

Rangwala, Glen, “Claims and evaluations of Iraq’s proscribed weapons,” University of Cambridge, 2004

Ricks, Thomas, Fiasco, New York: Penguin Press, 2006

Risen, James, “Ex-arms hunter wants answers on Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1/26/04

Ritter, Scott, “The Case for Iraq’s Qualitative Disarmament,” Arms Control Today, June 2000

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04

Whitelaw, Kevin and Mazzetti, Mark, “Why War?” U.S. News & World Report, 10/14/02

ABC VIDEO: Former CIA Director James Woolsey On 9/11 And Iraq On 9/11/01

In this interview former CIA Director Woolsey is putting forward a theory about Iraq and Al Qaeda formulated by Laurie Mylroie. More can be read about her ideas here.

The Saddam Tapes, An Inside Look At Saddam Hussein’s Regime In Iraq Based Upon Hundreds Of Captured Audio Files, Part One Of A Two-Part Interview With Co-Editor David Palkki

David Palkki is the deputy director of the Conflict Records Research Center (CCRC) at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. The CCRC was created by the Secretary of Defense to provide scholars with access to captured documents from Iraq and Al Qaeda. This includes hundreds of papers and audio files from Saddam Hussein’s regime, some of which became the basis for the newly released Saddam Tapes co-edited by Kevin Woods, Mark Stout, and David Palkki. The book provides invaluable insight into everything from Saddam’s foreign policy, to his dealings with Iraq’s ethnosectarian groups, weapons of mass destruction, and United Nations’ sanctions and inspections. Below is the first of a two-part interview with David Palkki, which covers Saddam’s dealings with the United States, Israel, Iran, the Arab world, and the three wars he fought from 1980-2003. What emerges is a man that was obsessed with conspiracies against his country, while trying to place Iraq as the leader of the Middle East. Saddam often spent long hours with his inner circle discussing these matters, but he consistently miscalculated how other countries would react to his policies, leading to one foreign policy crisis after another for three straight decades.

1. How did you get involved with putting together The Saddam Tapes?

Kevin Woods, one of my co-editors, obtained funding from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to compile this study at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). I had previously worked with Kevin at IDA, and Kevin invited me to join him, and our other co-editor, Mark Stout. 

2. The first main topic in the book was Iraq’s relationship with the United States. Saddam seemed to believe that the United States was a major threat to his regime. Did you gain into any insight into why he felt that way? 

For decades he believed that the United States was hostile toward his regime and conspiratorial, which probably stemmed from a host of factors including his upbringing, U.S. support for Israel, anti-colonial sentiment in Iraq, and U.S. support for his enemies (Israel, Iran under the Shah, rebellious Kurds, etc.). Iraq had problematic, but much closer ties with the Soviet Union than with the United States, which might not have been insignificant given the Cold War context.  One striking thing that the tapes reveal is the degree to which Saddam expressed belief in bizarre conspiracy theories involving Zionists influencing or colluding with U.S. policymakers. 

Saddam believed that the U.S. was working with Israel and Iran to keep Iraq down (Middle East Online)

4. Based upon this worldview, Saddam believed that the U.S. was behind the Iran-Iraq War? 

He expressed belief that the United States was behind the Iranian Revolution, and that Zionists had fostered war between Iraq and Iran, so Israel could have an excuse to attack Iraq’s nuclear reactor under the cover of war. 

5. Yet, the Reagan administration quickly made a tilt towards Iraq in the war. How did Saddam view this new relationship? 

He was willing to accept assistance, but remained extremely skeptical of U.S. intentions. 

6. How did Saddam react to the Iran-Contra Affair when that story broke?

He was furious that the United States had secretly passed intelligence and facilitated weapons deliveries to Iran. He told his advisers that the Americans were “conspiring bastards,” and described the episode as “this stab in the back.”  

7. Saddam came out of the 1991 Gulf War believing that he had won. Can you explain where that opinion came from?

Saddam defined victory as staying in power. From his perspective, the United States had created an enormous coalition that had attacked Iraq, and sought to remove him from power, but failed.  He remained in power well after Bush and Thatcher had been replaced.  In this sense, he was victorious.

8. Despite Saddam’s negative opinion of the United States, he actually tried to improve relations with the Clinton administration. Can you explain why he did that, and what came of those overtures?

Clinton, shortly after defeating Bush in the election, told a reporter that as a Southern Baptist he believed in deathbed conversions, and that if Iraq improved its behavior, the United States would lighten up on Iraq. Saddam was very aware of the softer rhetoric from the president-elect, and wished to end the economic sanctions. From Saddam’s perspective, though, the role of the Israel Lobby, and the need for cheap oil in the United States would serve to undermine rapprochement. 

9. When the Bush administration began singling out Iraq in 2002, Saddam did not believe that America would go to war. Why did he feel that way?

We didn’t find a clear answer to this in captured audio files. According to a variety of interrogation reports (see the Duelfer Report and Iraqi Perspectives Project), Saddam and his core advisers didn’t think the United States had the stomach for a bloody ground campaign to topple the regime. 

10. Even when it became apparent to Saddam that the U.S. meant business, and was going to invade, he still felt that Iraq was going to win. Where did that opinion come from? 

Perhaps from his belief about Iraq’s “victory” in 1991. In 1991, the United States had many coalition partners, but failed to replace the regime, and in 2003 it had far fewer partners. According to a variety of sources, many of Saddam’s advisers also failed to inform him about Iraqi weaknesses. 

11. Looking at these events, can you say that Saddam ever figured out how the U.S. worked?

Saddam understood some things, and at times was quite insightful.  That said his views of the United States were frequently grossly inaccurate. 

12. Didn’t Saddam spend a large amount of time discussing with his inner circle U.S. politics and policy? 

Yes, he did. He also spent many hours discussing the politics and policies of other countries. The United States was often a key player, but only one of many, and in many instances not as important as scholarly accounts imply. 

13. Of more immediate concern to Saddam during his time in power was Israel. Would it be wrong to say that he considered Israel his largest rival and threat to Iraq in the region?

I think he viewed Egypt as more of a “rival” than Israel in the sense that Iraq was competing with Egypt for leadership of the Arab world. Syria was also a key rival. Israel would never rival Iraq in this sense. In the military sense, by contrast, Israel and Iran were both key rivals. Israel could never occupy parts of Iraq in the way that Iran could, and in this sense Iran was the greater rival. Israel could launch airstrikes and engage in intrigues, however, which Saddam saw as threatening. 

14. Saddam’s opposition to Israel seemed to be driven by two factors. One he saw Israel as a military threat, but you also argued that he was a fervent anti-Semite. Can you elaborate on that?

Saddam bought into many anti-Semitic views. For instance, he ordered his inner circle to read “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an infamous anti-Semitic text forged by the Russian Czar’s secret police nearly a century earlier, and said that he believed what it said about Zionists usurping countries’ economies. When bad things happened to Iraq, Saddam frequently suspected a hidden Jewish/Zionist hand.

15. What did Saddam see as his role in the Arab world?

He wanted to lead the Arab world. He spoke of this frequently. 

16. How did that affect his foreign policy? 

Support for Palestinian groups, rivalry with Egypt and Syria, and hostility toward Israel all come to mind. 

17. After 1979 Iran became a main focus of Saddam, and the next year he started the Iran-Iraq War. What were the main reasons he gave publicly and privately to justify that war?

In public, he largely justified it by saying that Iran had attacked Iraq by shelling various border towns. He also said this in private, but it is clear from Iraqi intelligence reports that he knew that Iran had no military capabilities to seriously invade Iraq, whereas Iraqi military intelligence informed him that Iraqi forces could reach deep into Iran. 

One of Saddam's many foreign policy foibles was launching the Iran-Iraq War in 1980 (AFP)

18. Iraq thought it would have a quick victory over Iran, because it was still in the throes of a revolutionary period. That proved false, and the war ended up dragging on for years with Iraq facing a country with a much larger population. Saddam seemed to realize this before many others in the regime. How did he end up changing tactics to try to prevail?

He tried hard to end the war, but also came to realize that Iraq needed to target Iranian economic targets. He also relied on chemical weapons to help offset massive Iranian human wave attacks. 

19. That seemed a rather astute observation by Saddam, but at the same time he was known to micro-manage the war. What kind of affect did that have?

According to many military officers who served under his command, the effects were horrible for the Iraqis. Iraqi defectors frequently blamed Saddam’s micromanaging for military setbacks. 

20. Did Saddam prove to have much of a military mind?

He did not have much of a military background prior to assuming power, though he studied hard and learned things as he went along. 

21. Were the people around him much better?

Some generals were reportedly chosen for their loyalty combined with lack of ambition/intelligence.  “Saddam’s Generals,” a new book by Kevin Woods and Wick Murray out by the National Defense University Press, has great information on this. 

22. The next decade Saddam made another foreign policy blunder by invading Kuwait. What were the main reasons for this new war?

That’s a good question.  Iraq was facing huge economic problems, which Saddam might have thought could be solved by invading Kuwait, thus ending Iraq’s debts to Kuwait and taking Kuwait’s oil. He also appeared to have believed that Kuwait, the United States, and Israel were conspiring against Iraq, and might have seen the invasion as an advantageous preemptive/preventive strike. I co-authored an article coming out in a few months on this topic in the journal Diplomatic History. 

23. One of Saddam’s many missteps in this conflict was the taking of Western hostages and using them as human shields. What did he hope to achieve with this tactic?

I haven’t seen a captured record that gives an answer to this, but it seems clear to me that he thought it would undermine desire for war in the West. 

24. A major controversy after the Gulf War was why Iraq did not use its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Some have argued that a threatening letter by then Secretary of State James Baker deterred Iraq from using these munitions. What did the tapes reveal about this matter?

In a number of meetings during the weeks prior to and after invading Kuwait, Saddam expressed concern that the United States might attack Iraq with nuclear weapons. Iraq practiced massive evacuations of Baghdad and other cities, in preparation for nuclear strikes. The Iraqis dispersed their forces to make them harder to destroy with nuclear weapons. There’s no smoking gun, but it seems clear to me that he feared nuclear retaliation. It’s less clear to me that Baker’s warning had much of an effect on Saddam’s decision. 

SOURCES

Woods, Kevin, Palkki, David, and Stout, Mark, The Saddam Tapes, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City: Cambridge University Press, 2011

 

PBS VIDEO: War Behind Closed Doors

PBS The War Behind closed doors by Ali_La_Pointe

How The CIA Ignored Hard Evidence That Iraq No Longer Had Any WMD Programs In 2002

In 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began a secret program to contact relatives of scientists working on Iraq’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs living in the United States. For years, U.S. intelligence had struggled to get any agents into Iraq, and this was seen as a new way to make contacts within the country. What the Agency was told was that Saddam Hussein no longer had any active weapons program since the 1990s. That didn’t fit the CIA's pre-conceived view of Iraq, so the reports were ignored, and never shared within the Agency or with the rest of the government. Instead, U.S. intelligence stuck with its previous assessment that all of Iraq’s WMD and nuclear operations were up and running, and were even larger than they’d been before. After the 2003 invasion, it turned out that the family members were right, and the Agency was wrong. This successful intelligence operation was a perfect example of how the CIA was convinced that Iraq had WMD, and ignored anything that contradicted that belief.

For decades, the United States had struggled to recruit or infiltrate agents into Iraq. Saddam Hussein had a near totalitarian hold upon the country. He used several methods to achieve this, starting with the Baath Party, which reached down to every community, and the largesse of the state, both of which were used to create patronage systems to maintain both support and tabs on the public. There were also several different intelligence agencies that kept track of different sectors of the country. On top of that, Saddam created a complex network of family and clan members that came from his hometown of Tikrit in Salahaddin province that made up his internal circle. He also carried out constant purges, used a divide and conquer strategy with both his opponents and allies, and increasingly turned to tribal sheikhs for additional support after the Gulf War. Many Iraqis then, were dependent upon the state for support, and fearful of Saddam’s repression, which greatly curtailed the likelihood of anyone cooperating with the United States.

In the 1990s for example, the CIA tried and failed to penetrate Iraq. First, before and after (1) the 1991 Gulf War, President George H. Bush ordered U.S. intelligence to try a coup, but with no success. In 1994, a CIA base was established in Kurdistan to work with the Kurds and Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC). The next year, Chalabi led a failed revolt. The year after that, Saddam launched a campaign in northern Iraq that largely expelled the INC from the region. In 1996, the CIA backed a failed coup that involved Iyad Allawi and his Iraqi National List. (2) From 1997-1998 Jack Downing, the Agency’s Deputy Director of Operations launched a campaign to recruit sources within the country, but with no success. Around the same time, CIA Director George Tenet created a committee that covered the nations considered the biggest threats to the Unites States that were also the hardest to penetrate. That included North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The group went over the lack of resources America had in Iraq, but failed to gain any success. During the decade, Saddam also launched waves of repression, executions, and purges. All together these events made the 1990s a disappointing period for the CIA and U.S., as it failed to establish a foothold in Saddam’s Iraq. The Americans didn’t have much more success in the 2000s before the U.S. invasion either.

When it came to Iraq’s WMD programs, the U.S. became almost completely dependent upon the United Nations inspectors that were in the country from 1991 to 1998. The U.N. team had unprecedented access to Iraq, and went to every major suspected site. Despite Saddam’s best effort to stifle them, they proved to be highly effective, and put an end to his programs by the time they left. The problem for the U.S. was when the inspectors departed, the intelligence agencies had to depend upon satellites and defectors, neither of which proved reliable. In turn, their reporting on Iraq got spottier and spottier, and became largely based upon the assumptions that Saddam must have restarted all of his programs after the U.N. exited. This theory eventually became the conventional wisdom within the Agency, and shaped all of its studies in the 2000s.

Into this information vacuum stepped Charlie Allen. Allen was the CIA’s Assistant Director of Collection. In 1998, he began looking for new ways to collect data on Iraq. Two years later he hatched a scheme to contact family members of scientists working on Iraq’s weapons programs. He got in touch with around 30 of them, and James Risen of the New York Times talked to one, Sawsan Al-Haddad. Haddad was a doctor living in Cleveland, Ohio when in May 2002 a CIA officer contacted her. She was asked to go back to Iraq and talk to her brother, Saad Tawfiq. Tawfiq was a British trained engineer who lived in Baghdad, and worked on the nuclear program. The Agency wanted to know whether Tawfiq would defect, and if not whether he would answer questions about Saddam’s weapons operations. Haddad agreed. She went through weeks of training, going through the things should would ask her brother. In September, she set off to Iraq. When she met her brother, and they initially talked he said that it would be impossible for him to leave the country. Then she started going over the questions the CIA had prepared for him. Tawfiq said that the nuclear program was ended in the 1990s after the Gulf War. He said there was no more funding, no one was working on it, that Iraq lacked the equipment and material to restart it, and that there was no drive to even revive it. Tawfiq also refuted the story that Iraq tried to buy uranium yellow cake from the African country of Niger, which had just been released in the British dossier on Iraq’s WMD. Haddad asked her brother about Khidir Abdul Abbas Hamza, the former Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected in 1994, and then wrote a book in 2000, Saddam’s Bombmaker, claiming that Saddam had restarted his effort to build an atomic bomb. Tawfiq stated that Hamza knew nothing, and was just talking to making money. At the end, Haddad’s brother told her that he hoped his interview would stop the war. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

When Haddad returned to Cleveland and was debriefed, her brother’s testimony was rejected. The CIA officer who originally contacted her told her that the Agency thought her brother was lying. The 29 other scientists in Iraq that were talked to by family members also claimed there were no WMD or nuclear programs in Iraq. The CIA took this information, and did nothing with it. None of it was believed because they thought the scientists were trying to hide Saddam’s weapons. Therefore the reports were not disseminated within the Agency or to any other part of the government. In fact, the Directorate of Operations that was also trying to find spies within Iraq, was mad at Allen, and shut down his program. Instead, the CIA and the rest of the American intelligence community continued on with their claims that Iraq’s nuclear and WMD programs had been restarted, and were larger than before the Gulf War largely based upon assumptions rather than hard evidence. That was the story portrayed in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons program, which was presented to Congress to help convince them for the necessity of war. Tawfiq on the other hand, was hoping that he could change minds in Washington about Iraq, but when he saw Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in February 2003 about Iraq’s weapons programs, he was discouraged.

The CIA leadership in fact, was so wedded to their hypothesis about Iraq’s programs that it went on to ignore other on the ground intelligence before and after the 2003 invasion. In November 2002, international weapons inspectors returned to Iraq. By January 2003, they reported that the nuclear facilities they had visited were basically untouched since the last time they were there in 1998. (3) At the end of the month, and then in February, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. inspectors issued their official reports to the Security Council saying there was no active weapons programs in the country.  That was dismissed. Then after the 2003 invasion, when no weapons showed up, CIA Director Tenet continued to believe that they were going to be found. The head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, who led the search for Iraq’s WMD and nuclear programs in post-Saddam Iraq, met with Tenet and told him that there was nothing in Iraq just before he resigned in January 2004. Kay claimed the Director still thought the U.S. was going to turn something up. It took around a year after the war had started for Tenet to finally change his mind. That obstinacy in the face of growing evidence even into 2004, showed how reports like those from Tawfiq who was in Iraq, and had worked on the nuclear program, could be dismissed by the Agency. It was so firmly wedded to its ideas about Iraq that anything that did not fit its view was discarded.

Saddam Hussein believed that a nuclear bomb was the path to making Iraq a world power. The 1991 Gulf War, United Nations inspectors, and sanctions put an end to his dreams. Facilities were taken apart, documents were found, and eventually Baghdad decided to shut down its program, and shift its scientists to other work. The United States knew nothing of his because they were largely blind about what was happening within Iraq after the inspectors left in 1998. Attempts to get spies within Iraq failed, but when Charlie Allen contacted 30 scientists from Iraq’s weapons programs, the U.S. finally had hard evidence that there was nothing suspicious going on in Iraq. Rather than analyzing these stories, and using them for further research, they were dismissed because they didn’t fit the Agency’s assumptions. That wasn’t because intelligence was lying about Saddam, but rather it believed all the programs were up and running, and nothing was going to shake them from that image. The CIA and others just could not fathom that Iraq would give up on obtaining nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons given its past history. This was a missed opportunity, and highlighted the huge intelligence failure that the U.S. experienced, which helped lead to the 2003 invasion.

FOOTNOTES

1. Waller, Douglas, “Bush’s Rude Surprise,” Newsweek, 4/22/91

2. Shrader, Katherine Pfleger, “Nominee linked to U.S., CIA by decades of anti-Hussein work,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/29/04

3. Jansen, Michael, “Inspectors states no banned weapons found in Iraq so far,” Irish Times, 1/2/03

SOURCES

Anderson, Jon Lee, “A Man Of The Shadows,” New Yorker, 1/24/05

El Baradei, Mohamed, “The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” IAEA, 2/14/03

Broder, Jonathan, “U.S. policy on Iraqi chaos: Cold, hard – and wistful,” San Francisco Examiner, 3/31/91

Gordon, Michael and Risen, James, “Report’s Findings Undercut U.S. Argument,” New York Times, 1/28/03

Hersh, Seymour, “The Iraq Hawks,” New Yorker, 12/24/01
- “Selective Intelligence,” New Yorker, 5/12/03

Hoffman, David and Balz, Dan, “Bush Plans Effort Aimed at Destabilizing, Toppling Iraqi Leader,” Washington Post, 8/6/90

Iraq Survey Group, “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCIA on Iraq’s WMD,” 9/30/04

Jansen, Michael, “Inspectors states no banned weapons found in Iraq so far,” Irish Times, 1/2/03

MacLeod, Scott, “Live From Baghdad: What the Iraqis Told Blix,” Time, 11/21/02

Overseas and Defense Secretariat, “Iraq: Options Paper,” 3/8/02

PBS Frontline, “Khidhir Hamza,” Gunning For Saddam, 11/8/01

Priest, Dana and Pincus, Walter, “Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysis’ Views,” Washington Post, 6/7/03

Risen, James, “C.I.A. Held Back Iraqi Arms Data, Officials Say,” New York Times, 7/6/04
- State of War; The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2006

Risen, James, Sanger, David and Shanker, Thom, “In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat,” New York Times, 7/20/03

Rose, David, “Iraq’s Arsenal of Terror,” Vanity Fair, May 2002

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04

Shelburne, Elizabeth, “Weapons of Misperception,” Atlantic, 1/13/04

Shrader, Katherine Pfleger, “Nominee linked to U.S., CIA by decades of anti-Hussein work,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/29/04

Tripp, Charles, A History Of Iraq, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Dehli: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Waller, Douglas, “Bush’s Rude Surprise,” Newsweek, 4/22/91

Whitelaw, Kevin and Mazzetti, Mark, “Why War?” U.S. News & World Report, 10/14/02

Charles Duelfer’s Account Of The End Of The 1990s U.N. Inspections

In the July/August 2009 issue of The National Interest, former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer painted a picture of the first round of Iraq inspections in the 1990s. On the one hand, his piece is informative because it explains how international support for inspections in Iraq deteriorated. This was pushed along by Saddam’s astute use of bribes and lucrative petroleum deals through the United Nations’ Oil for Food program to sow dissent amongst the Security Council. On the other hand nowhere does he mention the work that the inspectors did in Iraq, which was largely successful in destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and nuclear programs. Rather Duelfer solely concentrates upon the political squabbles that occurred behind the scenes in Iraq, and within the United Nations that led to the end of the inspections in 1998.

As part of the 1991 cease-fire that ended the Gulf War, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq until it divulged and destroyed all of its WMD and nuclear programs. To achieve this goal the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) was created as the first inspectors in Iraq. This was the toughest and most intrusive inspection regime created since Germany after World War I. Duelfer skips all of UNSCOM’s early work, and goes to its last two years in 1997 and 1998 to highlight the political problems it ran into.

1997 was the beginning of the end of UNSCOM. In that year Iraq refused to admit American inspectors into the country claiming that Washington was trying to undermine the government. That was true as Pres. Clinton tried to launch a coup the previous year using the inspections. At the same time, Saddam was making another concerted effort to undermine and end the process, and the sanctions. UNSCOM didn’t comply with Baghdad’s request, and withdrew. They returned in three weeks, but under a deal brokered by France and Russia where foreign diplomats acted as chaperons for the inspectors. A few months later Baghdad refused to let the inspectors into presidential palaces. A deal was eventually worked out with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, but many saw it as appeasement of Saddam. The delay also allowed Iraq to empty the palaces of any incriminating material.

By 1997 support for the inspections and sanctions were weakening anyway within the Security Council. Iraq was offering Russia, France, and other countries preferential oil contracts under the Oil for Food program to weaken and undermine UNSCOM. Iraq was also correctly arguing that the inspections were being used by the U.S. for political ends, beyond what the U.N. resolution called for. Duelfer argues that these divisions made the inspections useless. The inspectors themselves became divided, some collecting intelligence for their own countries, some giving it to Iraq, and the lack of a united Security Council meant that Baghdad could chip away at the inspections little by little with no repercussions.

In 1998 Iraq refused to cooperate with the inspectors anymore. They withdrew as the U.S. and England launched Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign for non-cooperation with UNSCOM. Duelfer calls the attack a “feckless bombing,” and said that afterwards U.S. containment of Iraq ended with the suspension of inspections. This is far from true. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was the commander of the U.S. Central Command at the time, received intelligence that Saddam was teetering and was seriously afraid that he might be overthrown as a result Desert Fox. More importantly, as a result of the bombing, Iraq decided to give up on its weapons programs. The Iraq Study Group later found out that labs were shutdown and work was ended as Baghdad believed that it could never continue under U.N. sanctions and U.S. attacks. The U.S.-U.K. no fly zones continued, as well as U.N. sanctions, and Iraq never restarted its weapons programs. The problem of course was that the West completely missed these changes in Iraq. Saddam’s constant refusal to cooperate with inspections, convinced the United States that Iraq would never give up its desire to have WMD. These unresolved issues were left to fester, and became a driving issue for many American politicians and foreign policy officials, who later gained office in the Bush administration.

Where Duelfer’s article really falls short however is that he never really discusses what UNSCOM accomplished. He writes that the inspections did find out a lot about Iraq’s WMD programs in seven years, but never mentions that by 1996 Iraq’s known WMD munitions and equipment, and nuclear programs had been dismantled and destroyed. There was still an unaccounted for stockpile of weapons and WMD agents left over from the Iran-Iraq War, much of which was probably useless as it had expired, but as far as new production or active programs was concerned, there were none by the time UNSCOM left the country in December 1998.

Instead what you walk away from the Duelfer piece thinking is that the inspections were eventually undermined by political divisions within the U.N. and maneuvers by Saddam, and that overall they were failure. It seems that Duelfer came away from his work with UNSCOM mad and bitter because he was forced to leave before he felt his job was done. His comments after 1998 show that he was open to any and all allegations of Iraq breaking the U.N. resolutions on its WMD and nuclear programs. Even now in 2009 he apparently still holds a grudge from his experience, which makes him ignore the successes that he achieved while an inspector.

SOURCES

Blix, Hans, “An Update On Inspection,” UNMOVIC, 1/27/03

CNN, “Scott Ritter: Facts needed before Iraq attack,” 7/12/02

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, “S/1997/779,” International Atomic Energy Agency, 10/8/97

Duelfer, Charles, “Canaries in the Cooling Tower,” The National Interest, July/August 2009

Gordon, Michael and Miller, Judith, “Threats And Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest For A-Bomb Parts,” New York Times, 9/8/02

Guardian, “The coup that wasn’t,” 9/26/05

Miller, Judith, “An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 Hidden Weapons Sites,” New York Times, 12/20/01

PBS Frontline, “Interview: Kenneth Pollack,” 2/20/03

Rangwala, Glen, Hurd, Nathaniel, and Millar, Alistair, “A Case For Concern, Not A Case For War,” Middle East Report Online, 1/28/03

Ricks, Tom, Fiasco, 2006

Ritter, Scott, “The Case for Iraq’s Qualitative Disarmament,” Arms Control Today, June 2000

Rose, David, “Iraq’s Arsenal of Terror,” Vanity Fair, May 2002

Warrick, Joby, “In Assessing Iraq’s Arsenal, The ‘Reality Is Uncertainty,’” Washington Post, 7/31/02