Saddam, the FBI and Cliocide in Iraq
Joyce Battle (with help from Brendan McQuade) has posted twenty interviews of Saddam Hussein by the FBI to the National Security Archives at George Washington University, having done the hard work of FOIAing them.
In this pdf file, the FBI interrogator asks a lot of leading questions about al-Qaeda and Saddam shoots them down effectively.
In this pdf file, Saddam explains, "Hussein stated Iran was Iraq's major threat due to their common border and believed Iran intended to annex Southern Iraq into Iran. The possibility of Iran trying to annex a portion of Southern Iraq was viewed by Hussein and Iraq as the most significant threat facing Iraq. hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from a attack from Iran. Hussein stated he believed Israel was a threat to the entire Arab world, not specifically Iraq."
Aljazeera English reports on Saddam Hussein's fear of Iran (the reason he did not publicly admit to having destroyed his chemical and biological weapons), his distaste for al-Qaeda, and his toying with a new alliance with the US against Iran.
As a professional historian of the Middle East, I am appalled by these documents. They are very odd because the agenda for the interviews was clearly set by Cheney and they were intended to justify the Bush administration. The historical questions are naive and elicit no interesting new information. I can't think of anything in the documents that couldn't just have been found in Saddam's old speeches. And the blanked-out document is very suspicious; presumably the answers there reflected poorly on Bush or Washington or something.
Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and a mass murderer. But to have him so shoddily and self-interestedly debriefed and then lynched by the Mahdi Army was a great disservice to history. It is the sort of thing we came to expect from the Bush administration, which oversaw the destruction of the entire twentieth-century historical record for Iraq, as well as crushing and destroying under tanks and helicopters entire libraries of ancient Iraqi civilization, a crime I have dubbed "cliocide."
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/03/2009 01:02:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Looking forward to future amplifications of the last 33 words. PHIL :)
the blank portions include Saddam mentioning some of the history of his dealings with the US government in.. shall we say.. less flattering vocabulary..
~Saif
Saddam was convinced that the US would reinstall him "to save Iraq". This belief could only have come from his American handlers, and explains his anti-Iran, pro-US statements.
He was just telling his handlers what they wanted to hear.
Saddam Hussein's fate was that of any witness to criminal activity, dead men tell no tales, just like in the movies.
...and they got away with it!
It's a sign of just how completely Bush, Cheney & Co. turned the world on its head that American interrogators ask loaded & simplistic questions, the U.S. government engages in the suppression and outright distruction of the historical record, while a brutal dictator answers (from a point of view very different from our own in many ways, for sure) forthrightly. The Bush reign of error is a textbook example of how to turn your strengths into weaknesses. I read recently a commentary (I don't remember now by whom--possibly Paul Krugman) about the opportunity costs represented by 8 years of Bush. We can add this stuff to the list. God knows how long it will take to undo all this.
Cliocide : “Clio was the Greek muse whose task was to watch over the course of human history, a comforting figure of the ancient past assuring western man this his noble compulsion to record what happened in their political structures and events gave him power and unique survival ability for life on earth. If nothing else, at least a detailed recorded history could stand as a testament to honorable faith and accomplishment, a worthy screed of who we are, what we tried to do and what actually happened. The United States has committed "cliocide" in Iraq: All of the recorded history for Iraq for the 20th century, all of it, has been completely lost in a mayhem of looting, destruction and fire. Everything the Iraqis have done and recorded since the Ottoman Empire, since the British took over and left, since the CIA gutted their Democracy with a coup in the 1950's — obliterated, and lost forever.”
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may I hazard a guess about what was redacted ?
I suspect Saddam was puzzled that GW Bush would turn down his offer to step aside, if only the US President would guarantee his safe passage to a country willing to take him in.
Fearing for his life, he made that offer repeatedly in the latter half of 2002, right through early March 2003.
Bush responded that he could leave, but that there would be no guarantee for his safety. Bush implied that Saddam and his family would be cut down like so much wheat if he fled.
So what might have been redacted could have been Saddam asking if Americans thought the war was worth the cost, considering that he offered to surrender before the first shot was fired.
If true, and if FBI agent Piro had put US interests ahead of his career, he would have been jailed for leaking Top Secret material.
But perhaps Bush and Cheney would have been impeached in 2005.
an avid student of the coverups that shape what is recorded as history
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"(the reason he did not publicly admit to having destroyed his chemical and biological weapons),"
This is an absolutely false statement. Why would you include it?
Dec. 2 2002
"Iraq will admit to no banned activities in a key weapons declaration it is required to give the United Nations, its top liaison with UN disarmament experts said Wednesday, courting US anger.
General Hossam Mohammad Amin vowed Iraq would submit a "huge declaration" by Sunday's deadline, but reiterated that Baghdad had none of the weapons of mass destruction that Washington has said it must own up to or risk military action for "lying".
"It will be a huge declaration containing new elements, containing new sites, new activities conducted during the absence of inspectors," said Amin, who heads Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate.
"It covers biological, chemical, missiles, nuclear but there are no prohibited activities," he told a news conference.
"We have absolutely no weapons of mass destruction."
Amin said Iraq's declaration had been drawn up by a large team of experts in accordance with its reading of Resolution 1441 in which the UN Security Council set out the tough new disarmament regime last month.
Evidence would be provided to back up the assertions in the document which could be checked out by UN weapons inspectors.
Resolution 1441 gave Iraq until Sunday to provide a "currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and dispersal systems.
"False statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq ... shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment."
US President George W. Bush has put it more bluntly, saying any "lying" by President Saddam Hussein's regime will prompt Washington to lead military action.
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer Monday.
"We have intelligence information about what Saddam Hussein possesses. He has chemical and biological weapons and he has missiles that can reach in excess of 150 kilometers, all three of which are violations of his sworn commitments to the United Nations."
Fleischer Wednesday flatly rejected Amin's insistence that Iraq had no mass destruction weapons but stressed Washington would make no formal response until it had had a chance to assess Baghdad's written submission.
"We believe, and we have said publicly, they continue to have weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons and chemical weapons," he said.
The president "is less interested in any of these statements that Iraqis happen to make. He's more interested in what they put in writing and present."
Fleischer said a formal US response would only be available after completion of the time-consuming process of assessing the Iraqi statement and whether it was accurate.
Amin rejected charges renewed by Fleischer Monday that Iraq had sought to procure aluminium tubes as part of a covert nuclear weapons programme.
He confirmed that two orders for tubes had been placed 18 months ago although never implemented, but insisted that their purpose had been to provide replacements for large numbers of tubes imported since 1987 as part of a project for artillery with a range of 10 kilometres (six miles).
Iraq was still permitted to pursue the artillery project under UN disarmament resolutions, he said.
2004 Agence France-Presse.
Professor Cole,
About the expression "cliocide"--am I correct that this crime would be two-fold: 1) the destruction of property (libraries, etc), and 2) the destruction of the cultural heritage embedded in such property. Yes?
The documents cannot be trusted, period. Saddam DID "publically" admit he destroyed the weapons in his interview with Dan Rather just before the war. Scott Ritter's research bears all this out.
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