http://www.discovery.org/a/4446

January 29, 2008

"CBS' Sixty Minutes devoted most of its Sunday program to one revealing story, an account of the remarkably productive seven month long interrogation of Saddam Hussein by FBI agent George Piro, an Arabic speaking American of Lebanese descent."

"...the big news was that Saddam got rid of his WMD in the 1990s, but refused to prove it--even when threatened by U.S. attack. The reasons, he said, were that he feared revealing Iraq's weakness to its real enemy, Iran, and that he needed the perception of WMD to maintain his prestige at home. He also believed that the worst that President George W. Bush would do to him was to drop some bombs, the way President Clinton had done in 1998."

"...Saddam expressly told Piro that he had planned to restart the WMD program in all phases--"chemical, biological and nuclear"--within a year after the lifting of U.N. sanctions. The 9/11 attacks and the reactions to them set back his plan, but didn't eliminate it."

"...in its Sixty Minutes program, CBS and reporter Scott Pelley, demonstrate complete faith in Piro and the FBI reports. The FBI, says the CBS story, rates the Piro interrogation as one of the top achievements of the Bureau's past 100 years of existence." 

"In fact, says Piro, Saddam intended to use weapons of mass destruction again someday.

"'Saddam had the engineers. The folks he needed to reconstruct his program were still there,'" FBI agent Piro reports.

"'That was his intention?'" asks Pelley.

"'Yes.'

"'What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?'

Answers Piro, "'He wanted pursue all of W.M.D. (sic)'

"'He wanted to reconstitute all of his W.M.D program--chemical, biological, even nuclear?'

"'Yes.'

With Iran going nuclear, Saddam would have to. His bluff was aimed at getting the US out of Iraq, so he could pursue his agenda. It would have worked with Clinton.

Mark