So what did Saddam say about the threat of America on the eve of war in 2003?
"Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.
He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.
The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD.
"In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq," according to the documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute.
Huh. We're the big scary country supposedly prompting nutball regimes to seek nuclear weapons for their safety, but even as we massed our ground forces in Kuwait and prepared for the most telegraphed war in history, Saddam still didn't believe we would invade him?
How does this reality square with the idea that we need to reassure thug states that we won't attack them in order to get them to abandon their nuclear weapons programs?
And don't say that the Iraq War makes that desire for nuclear weapons as a deterrent to our invasion real. If so, why after we destroyed Saddam's regime did Libya give up their WMD rather than accelerate their programs?
Some thug regimes want nukes and no amount of speechifying and outreach will dissuade them.
And Iran's mullahs, the people Saddam was really afraid of rather than the so-called unilateral cowboy Bush, are poised to get nuclear weapons.
Contemplate that bit of nuance.
