'Piro: I asked Saddam, “When sanctions were lifted, what were you going to do?” He said, “We were going to do what we needed to do or what we would have to do to protect us.” Which was his way of saying he would have reconstituted his entire WMD program.
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We had a very short time frame to really leverage the removal of Saddam before the Iraqi people saw us as an occupying force. I believe we had a six-month window, and we made huge mistakes.''The dictator’s discussions with Piro confirmed that the Iraq War was America’s original sin during the dawn of the 21st century — a war fought under false assumptions, a conflict that killed thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
The war also damaged America’s standing in the world and the credibility of the US government among its citizens. Even the official US Army history of Iraq concluded that the real winner of the war in Iraq wasn’t America.
It was … Iran.
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Piro: So, what he told me was that, of course, Iraq did not have the WMD that we suspected he had; Saddam had given a critical speech in June of 2000, which was a speech where he said that Iraq had WMD, and a lot of people wanted to know why — if he didn’t have WMD, why did he give that speech? So they wanted me to ask him about the speech, and I looked for a way or an opportunity to bring up the topic and be able to have a candid conversation with him about the speech without him realizing I was interrogating him about WMD.
And when he told me about that speech, his biggest enemy wasn’t the United States or Israel. His biggest enemy was Iran, and he told me he was constantly trying to balance or compete with Iran. Saddam’s biggest fear was that if Iran discovered how weak and vulnerable Iraq had become, nothing would prevent them from invading and taking southern Iraq. So, his goal was to keep Iran at bay.
Bergen: In that period before the US invasion, he was posturing that he had WMD or being ambiguous about it to deter the Iranians from invading Iraq. Is that what you’re saying?
Piro: Absolutely. Because that was his most significant threat. It wasn’t the United States. It was Iran, and he was purposely being misleading or kind of ambiguous about it. If you recall before the war, every intelligence agency around the world had come to the same conclusion that Iraq had WMD because of Saddam’s posturing, some of his vague statements and his prior history of using chemical and biological weapons against his people and also developing a nuclear weapons research program. And that worked to his advantage when it came to Iran.
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Saddam couldn’t afford to let the Iranians realize he had lost that capability because of US sanctions and the weapons inspections of Iraq. He “bluffed” his biggest enemy into believing he was still as powerful and as dangerous as he was during the 1987-’88 time frame.
I asked Saddam, “When sanctions were lifted, what were you going to do?” He said, “We were going to do what we needed to do or what we would have to do to protect us.” Which was his way of saying he would have reconstituted his entire WMD program.
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Bergen: Do you think he was surprised by how quickly the US toppled his regime?
Piro: He told me that he asked his military commanders to prepare for two weeks of conventional war, and then at that point, he expected and anticipated the unconventional war or the insurgency would kick in, and that would be a much more challenging type of warfare for the United States.
Bergen: Well, that turned out to be exactly right. …
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Bergen: The big question 20 years later is, was it all worth it? You look at Iraq, and there was the civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq under Saddam, but after the US invasion, a powerful al Qaeda branch known as al Qaeda in Iraq sprang up, which eventually morphed into ISIS. Then you have the spread of sectarianism, which has always existed in the Middle East but was undoubtedly amplified by the Iraq War and spread into Syria and became part of that civil war.
Saddam was a terrible human being. He’s one of the most murderous men of the late 20th century. Yet, at the same time, he kept a lid on things in Iraq, which had a functional education system and a relatively educated population, and that all blew up due to the US invasion. So how do you reflect on all this?
Piro: That’s a very tough question. Saddam is one of the most brutal dictators of our time and was responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities in history. But on the other hand, he told me we had no idea how difficult it was to rule Iraq, but we would figure that out by removing him.
And then you ask yourself, was it worth it? As an FBI agent, thankfully, I was not in a position to think about that or focus on that; my job was to interrogate.
On the other hand, what frustrates me more is that there were key opportunities at the beginning of the war and significant failures on our part, and if we had not made those, I wonder how different Iraq would look today.
Bergen: And what are those failures?
Piro: For me, one of the biggest was the US dismantling the Iraqi military.
Bergen: Why?
Piro: The biggest employer in Iraq in 2003 was the Iraqi military. So, we come in, and we completely dismantle the military. As in any country, a soldier relies on their salary and benefits to survive, and most have families and obligations, and responsibilities.
We didn’t realize the impact of that decision, and we just fired everyone. We didn’t think about how that was going to affect the situation in-country when you look at a workforce with a unique skill set and training that’s not transferrable to a lot of other things. And as a result, they became disgruntled and angry, and that was initially the basis of the insurgency that we faced in 2003 and 2004.
We had a very short time frame to really leverage the removal of Saddam before the Iraqi people saw us as an occupying force. I believe we had a six-month window, and we made huge mistakes.'
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'..Saddam Hussein .. FBI interrogator.', March 14, 2023
Context'..the United States .. to avoid disastrous wars .. A grand strategy of limits is crucial. Let’s hope it begins now..''America must lead, but mainly by example .. Most importantly, invest the savings to build a secure, dynamic, and prosperous America that others want to emulate.'(The Strategy of Denial) - '..the Cold War is an example of the United States successfully executing a multi-decade competition against a global authoritarian rival .. decoupling is inevitable..''..Xi .. Leninist version of Marxism .. “Document 9,” which condemned the core values and key institutions of liberal democracy.'(Spanish, English, Chinese) - The Values: 'You only have to read one book, "The History of Spain" by Father Juan de Mariana.' - Thomas Jefferson