In Britain we're still trying to understand precisely why and how our government joined the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the true mystery lies on the other side: what convinced Saddam Hussein to opt for such a suicidal strategy? He didn't have WMDs, or an advanced WMD programme. Yet he managed to convince everyone - including Western intelligence, his neighbours, and much of his own government - that he did. He never backed down from this bluff, even when it was clear to everyone else that Bush was serious about removing him, and even though he had no serious military defence in place. This master of self-preservation simply walked into the fire.
It looks like we will soon know much more about the workings of Saddam's mind, and of his regime. Apparently, he had the Nixonian habit of taping his own conversations, and many of those tapes have found their way into the hands of Kevin Woods and his colleagues at the Institute for Defence Analyses. Woods has also interviewed key members of Saddam's regime, like Tariq Aziz and Chemical Ali, and was given access to documents from government offices and Saddam's palaces. I greatly look forward to whatever Woods publishes on the subject. In the meantime we can thank the Cheap Talk blog for a fascinating account of a recent talk given by Woods at MIT.
What's clear is that the West badly misread Saddam's psychology and perspective on the world. Saddam saw himself, unequivocally, as the victor of the first Gulf war. This gave him a huge amount of (over-)confidence. It's also apparent that our intelligence services were deceived because the Iraqi government worked like a hall of mirrors, in which nobody was sure what was real and what wasn't:
A key player, the head of research into WMDs, was asked: Is it possible that there was a WMD program and you did not know about it? He said it was quite possible.
(The same man said he assumed that if Bush invaded and found none, he would plant them. Whilst so many here are appalled at the dishonesty of our leaders, Iraqis must have shocked at their lack of guile.)
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