Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein told U.S. interrogators in 2004 that he had disposed of his weapons of mass destruction long before a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, but he would have used the weapons against U.S. troops if he had kept them, the New York Daily News reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 15, 2007).
The main reason he pretended to still have weapons of mass destruction was because he was afraid of Iran, according to FBI records of Hussein's interrogation, recently acquired by the Daily News under the Freedom of Information Act.
The former dictator said he was so worried about how Iran would react if U.N. weapons inspectors revealed that Iraq had no more weapons of mass destruction, he might have approached Washington for protection.
Hussein told questioners that "Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable to attack from Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. to protect it from threats in the region," reads an FBI report from the interrogation.
In response to questions about any relationship with Osama bin Laden, Hussein referred to the al-Qaeda leader as a "zealot" and stressed that they had never met. Teaming up with al-Qaeda would have been too risky because the religious extremists might have eventually targeted him, Hussein said. A likelier collaborator for Iraq "would have been North Korea," he said.
Hussein told agents that the United States had "lost sight of the cause of 9/11," instead using the al-Qaeda attacks "as a justification to attack Iraq." His regime did not oppose the United States; it only objected to Washington's policies toward Iraq, he said.
As for the weapons of mass destruction, "we destroyed them," Hussein said. "We told you."
He added: "By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the U.S." (James Meek, New York Daily News, June 25).