Report Says Hussein Was Open To Exile Before 2003 Invasion ($1 billion and information on WMD's)

Washington Post ^ | September 27, 2007 | Karen DeYoung and Michael Abramowitz

[bobsunshine]

Less than a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled that he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper yesterday.

The meeting at Bush's Texas ranch was a planning session for a final diplomatic push at the United Nations. The White House was preparing to introduce a tough new Security Council resolution to pressure Hussein, but most council members saw it as a ploy to gain their authorization for war.

Spain's prime minister at the time, Jose Maria Aznar, expressed hope that war might be avoided -- or at least supported by a U.N. majority -- and Bush said that outcome would be "the best solution for us" and "would also save us $50 billion," referring to the initial U.S. estimate of what the Iraq war would cost. But Bush made it clear in the meeting that he expected to "be in Baghdad at the end of March."

[CJ Wolf]

Yeah, if anyone told Bush $50 billion, they were complete idiots.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1308

Stephanopoulos: Dollars and human costs.

Rumsfeld: Well, the lesser important is the cost in dollars. Human life is a treasure. The Office of Management and Budget estimated it would be something under 50 billion dollars.

Stephanopoulos: Outside estimates say up to 300 billion.

Rumsfeld: Baloney. How much of that would be paid by the United States, how much by other countries is an open question. But if you think about it, September 11th, besides the 3,000 lives, cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars. So, yes, measure the risk of acting, but also the risk of not acting. And if we suffered a biological September 11th, the cost would just be many, many, many multiples of any conflict.

Actually Rumsfeld was spot on. It cost us 50 billion to catch Saddam. The rest is nation building.

[rfp1234]

Even with Saddam gone, Iraq would have become a powder keg. His non-democratic successors would have been unable to keep the Shiites down and to deal with Iranian encroachment / infiltration.

So in the end, what we have now is probably better than the alternative: a nuke-seeking Iran dominating the Gulf and its oil, with a weak and unstable terrorist haven [Iraq] next door.

[rfp1234]

Where would Saddam have gone??

It starts with F and ends with E (wink wink, nudge nudge).

[paul51]

But Bush made it clear in the meeting that he expected to "be in Baghdad Tehran at the end of March."

Next up

[rfp1234]

Did any of the critics of liberating Iraq ever look at a map?

Considering the current geographic ignorance of much of the U.S. (and its elected Representatives), the question almost answers itself...to them, Iraq might as well be next to Okinawa!

[Red Steel]

911 attack estimated costs were well over a trillion dollars for the US economy.

[bobsunshine]

The text of the memo, in Spanish, is at this site:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Llego/momento/deshacerse/Sadam/elpepunac/20070926elpepinac_1/Tes

From Barcepundit:

http://barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/2007/09/much-is-being-made-of-scoop-by-pro.html

“Bush even wanted to soften the rivalry with Chirac, and thought he was being ill-advised. He even asked Aznar to send the French president his best wishes, since Aznar was going to meet him in the next days.

As I said, I’ll try to have the full translation, but this is the gist of it. Clearly this is not an equivalent to the Downing Street memo, but a leak from a Zapatero administration official to an anti-Bush, anti-Aznar newspaper in the hope of embarrassing the two, and atrociously translated to make it all look worse. But I’m sorry to say they only embarrassed themselves. No matter how much you spin it, the memorandum shows exactly the opposite to what they say it shows. In layman terms, they got hoisted by their own petard.”

Flopping Aces and others are all over this.

[Fledermaus]

I will leave Iraq and take the WMD's for....1....BILLION DOLLARS!!!

[RasterMaster]

He was "exiled" to Hades...

[Maumee]

Where would Saddam have gone......

With a billion bucks he could come and live in my basement, but of course he would have to live by my rules, no cooking WMDS on my stove and no taking potshots at my ceilings.

[MHGinTN]

"The truth is that even if Al Gore won the 2000 election and 09-11 still happened we would be doing the EXACT same things in Iraq we are doing now." Someone is dreaming ... it isn't hard to piece together just how ineffectual the democrats are. We have eight damned years of their little god, sinkEmperor, to show us what these eunuchs would do. The trade towers would have been but the first of several hideous slaughters, and it is unlikely that Gore, as stupid as he and his advisers are, would have shut the airways down with the attack on the towers, so the Sears Tower and other structures would have been impacted on 911.

It is one thing to argue Republicans are more prone to defend the nation then claim the democrats would do the same if in similar circumstance under attack, but to ignore the facts of what the noodlespined bastards have done in the past under similar circumstances is just stupidity begging for more terrorist slaughtering of Americans. Which is precisely what the American voters are appearing to wish upon themselves by putting these traitorous criminals back into power with a clinton and all the criminals like Berger, Albright, etc. they will bring to DC and the center of power again. I don't like the future as it appears voters are about to create with the clinton crime machine back into power. They will sell their souls and your life to fill their lusts.

[the invisib1e hand]

which hussein? Barak Hussein Obama?

[elpadre]

My recollection was that he had built a compound in Libya for he, his family and associates - more affectionately known in Libya as “Saddam City.” The story was that when the invasion started he would go into exile there. He also has billions tucked away somewhere, possibly there.

But, he became convinced that with the recent American failures in Vietnam and Samalia he could go to ground and come out the winner. His advisors may have convinced him they could line up the Democrats in Congress to work in his behalf.

[Milligan]

Saddam was using extortion.
What would Saddam do with 1 billion dollars?
Saddam & sons could stir more Arab outrage living in exile with saber rattling.

[Milligan]

Why did Ghadaffi give up his WMD program soon as Saddam was arrested?

Check with ikez78 he has many stories about Saddam and Ghadaffi connection.

Did Saddam outsourced his WMD program to avoid UN inspectors?

Source:

“From 1991 onwards, Saddam was principally focused on the fact that the UN had a mandate — a search warrant — to inspect all of the physical territory of Iraq. That meant that maintaining any meaningful research and development (R&D) facilities or test capabilities on prohibited weapons within the borders of the country would be virtually impossible. But, given that the “search warrant” extended only within the confines of Iraq, it was logical and expedient that any WMD R&D should be conducted under Iraqi control, but outside the country’s borders.....

http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/Libya/Jan3004.htm

[Just mythoughts]

I can’t find it and I may not have saved it but I recall reading that Saddam had been convinced by the French (and others) they would stop the US through the UN from removing him from power. That was why he waited until it was too late to flee.

[elpadre]

yes, I seem to remember that

[Milligan]

UN Resolution 1441 was unconditional.
Saddam was still brokering deals.

March 17 — United States, Britain and Spain declare time for diplomacy over, withdraw proposed resolution. President Bush gives Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq.

[Actually, U.S. officials made clear that U.S. troops would enter Iraq whether or not Saddam and his sons left the country. (Michael R. Gordon, “Allies Will Move In, Even if Saddam Hussein Moves Out,” New York Times, March 18, 2003, p. A16.)]

March 18 — Iraq’s leadership rejects Bush’s ultimatum.

[”On the eve of war, Iraq publicly offered unlimited access for American and British weapons hunters.” (David Rennie, “Saddam ‘offered Bush a huge oil deal to avert war’,” Daily Telegraph [London], Nov. 7, 2003, p. 17) And privately Iraq went well beyond this. In several back-channel contacts with U.S. officials, Iraq offered the U.S. “direct U.S. involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq,” oil concessions, the turn-over of a wanted terrorist, cooperation on the Israeli-Palestinian peace-process, and even internationally-supervised elections within two years. (James Risen, “Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 2003, p. A1) One doesn’t know where these offers may have led, since they were rejected by the U.S.: “A US intelligence source insisted that the decision not to negotiate came from the White House, which was demanding complete surrender. According to an Arab source, [a U.S. intermediary] sent a Saudi official a set of requirements he believed Iraq would have to fulfill. Those demands included Saddam’s abdication and departure, first to a US military base for interrogation and then into supervised exile, a surrender of Iraqi troops, and the admission that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (Julian Borger, Brian Whitaker, and Vikram Dodd “Saddam’s desperate offers to stave off war,” Guardian, Nov. 7, 2003, p. 3.)]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4685