First, Bush didn’t lie. A lie is a knowingly false statement. Making a statement you believe to be true, that later turns out to be incorrect, is a mistake, not a lie. I know a lot of people don’t believe it was a mistake. But I think it was actually an understandable and reasonable mistake to make.
Certain facts are uncontested. Prior to the first gulf war, Saddam Hussein not only possessed weapons of mass destruction but had used them against Iran and his own people.
After the Gulf War, Saddam agreed to give up his WMD and also agreed to allow U.N. Inspectors. The U.N. inspectors identified and destroyed a great deal of WMD, but in 1998 the inspectors were ejected by Saddam Hussein leaving WMD that had been identified, but not destroyed.
Just about every country’s intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had retained these weapons. President Clinton believed he retained these weapons. France and Germany opposed the U.S. invasion, but they didn’t claim Saddam had no WMD, they simply thought that sanctions and inspections should be given more time.
How could everyone be so wrong? Because Saddam wanted the world to believe he had them. Think about it for a second. You are an intelligence analyst trying to determine if Iraq has WMD. What assumption are you going to operate under? Are you going to assume that if there are WMD Saddam is trying to hide them? Or are you going to assume that if there are no WMD that Saddam is trying to make you think they exist? It’s like being a teacher giving a test. A student keeps furtively glancing at a piece of paper hidden in his sleeve, when you confront him he swallows the paper. Is it possible the student wasn’t cheating? Possible, yes. But it is far more likely he was cheating. Believing he was cheating would not be at all unreasonable. The United States was mistaken about the WMD because Saddam wanted us to be mistaken.
Why would he want such a thing? Because he was more afraid of being invaded by Iran than by the United States.
How do I know this? Because Saddam confessed as much while being interrogated by FBI agent George Piro. Piro gave an interview with 60 Minutes on January 27, 2008. A CBS News story on the interview can be found here. It is really interesting reading as it describes how Piro gained Saddam’s trust over a period of many months. The story includes this exchange:
"And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?" Pelley asks.
"He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq," Piro says.
"So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.
"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.
Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.
"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.
"Absolutely," Piro says.
"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, 'Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?" Pelley asks.
"He didn't. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially," Piro says.
Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. "He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage," he says.
"Saddam didn't believe that the United States would invade," Pelley remarks.
"Not initially, no," Piro says.
In 2003, in order to believe there were no WMD in Iraq, you had to believe that Saddam had destroyed all his WMD, but had done so secretly, despite the fact that doing so openly would have ended sanctions on his country. Bush made a mistake, but Saddam Hussein made a serious one himself.
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