http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-saddam12oct12,1,1983638.story?coll=la-home-headlines THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Through Hussein's Looking Glass
CIA report says the Iraqi leader assumed the agency knew he didn't have banned weaponry.
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2004
WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein was convinced he won the Persian Gulf War in 1991. And when he destroyed all his weapons of mass destruction after that war, Hussein was sure the CIA knew it. As a result, he saw 12 years of United Nations resolutions, trade sanctions and threats of war as a charade to humiliate him.
In Hussein's view, Washington and Baghdad should have been close allies. He could have helped curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He offered to become America's "best friend in the region, bar none." He was certain U.S. forces would never invade.
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They saw evidence of banned weapons when none existed. They missed signs that now seem obvious. President Bush, for example, insisted before the war that the failure by U.N. teams to find any evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons despite 731 inspections in the four months before the invasion simply proved that Hussein was hiding them — not that they didn't exist.
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In Hussein's view, the U.S. priority in the region was to ensure that Iran's Islamic Revolution did not spread to other nations and give radical Shiite clerics a chokehold on global oil supplies. He was convinced that Washington's national interest lay in containing Iran's suspected nuclear arms program, not in toppling his regime.
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