Today's WashPost is carrying an important article -- transcripts of FBI interrogation and "conversations" with Saddam Hussein were released through FOIA. His answers serve to reinforce the conclusion that the Bush administration lied and lied and lied to start this war.
Read on:
In this article published today -- 2 July 2009 -- the WashPost makes public partial content of FBI interrogations and "conversations" with Saddam Hussein. While it is, of course, entirely possible that Saddam was lying to his interrogators, if we consider what we knew about Iraq before we invaded and what we have learned since the invasion it looks to me as though he was speaking truthfully.
Here are quotes from the WashPost article:
Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.
Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."
"The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors," Piro (the interrogator) wrote. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq."
And, finally, this:
Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that "he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix." Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them "did not have the same belief or vision."
If this already has been diaried, and if I inserted too many block quotes, sorry about that.