Washington: An officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, who interrogated former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein soon after his 2003 capture by US special forces, has claimed that the United States made serious errors while creating a profile on the country's leader.
Analyst John Nixon says that after his numerous conversations with the deposed leader, he found that America had made numerous critical mistakes during their intervention in Iraq.
Primarily, Nixon claims that Saddam had never intended to use chemical weapons against his enemies. the presence of these weapons in Iraq was one of the chief reasons that propelled the Bush administration to green light Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.
According to Nixon, when Saddam was asked about the weapons he dismissed even the very idea of it. “We never thought about using weapons of mass destruction. It was not discussed. Use chemical weapons against the world? Is there anyone with full faculties who would do this? Who would use these weapons when they had not been used against us?”
Writing for the Daily Mail on Sunday, Nixon admits the reply was “not what we had expected to hear”.
Saddam then added that a breakdown of communication between his government and America had led to the suspicion and the lies.
But what came next still haunts Nixon. According to the CIA officer, Saddam had warned that America “would fail” in Iraq.
“You are going to fail. You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq. You are going to fail in Iraq because you do not know the language, the history, and you do not understand the Arab mind,” the dictator is believed to have said.
His prediction has been true. Iraq remains a military nightmare and is mostly a failed state with 5,000 American troops still stationed there — struggling to maintain control of the country.
