FBI notes: Saddam feared Iran more than US attack

Breitbart ^ | July 2, 2009 | PAMELA HESS

[ClassicLiberal]

The farm where Saddam Hussein hid from U.S. forces before he was captured in December 2003 was familiar ground for the Iraqi dictator: It was the same place, he told an FBI agent, where he sought refuge 44 years earlier after taking part in a failed attempt to kill Iraq's president.

Saddam also told the U.S. official that he had used telephones only twice in the last 14 years, and moved his locations daily. With troops closing in on him, Saddam returned to the farm outside Tikrit where he hid in 1959 after joining in a failed bid to assassinate Iraqi president Abd Al-Karim Qassem.

Those details are among more than 100 pages of notes written by George Piro, an FBI special agent who interviewed Saddam after he was nabbed at the farm. The notes of the FBI interviews were made public by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute.

Saddam told Piro that instead of relying on phones, he communicated by courier or met with his officials personally. "He was very aware of the United States' significant technological capabilities," the agent wrote in notes after one interview.

The former Iraqi dictator was captured nine months after the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in March 2003. Saddam was executed by hanging on orders of Iraq's successor government in December 2006.

In a series of interviews between February and June of 2004, Saddam also told Piro that he falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.

Saddam denied having unconventional weapons before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but refused to allow U.N. inspectors to search his country from 1998 until 2002.

[ConservativeMan55]

Interesting

[cripplecreek]

Makes sense to fear Iran more. Between our own self restraint and the restraint of the global community we left Iraq intact. Had Iran been the ones to go into Iraq it would have been a massacre and likely would still be going on.

[Blue State Insurgent]

Saddam didn't fear us because we had the habit of cutting and running in the face of terrorism. We even had 500,000 troops in his backyard and later occupied 2/3rds of his country and still we let him slide. So, he thought bringing down the WTC would do the trick and get us out of his hair for good or, at the very least, get us to invade and bleed us to death with a guerrilla insurgency knowing it would only be a matter of time before the American public demanded an ignominious retreat.

[Eagles6]

"No such weapons were found after the war."

Keep repeating the same lie over and over and it becomes the truth.

[Loud Mime]

Saddam relied on our Democrats, who continue to apologiZe

[Red Dog #1]

A partial but important vindication of Bush’s policies. And a further nail in the coffin of the “Bush lied/people died” fallacy.