According to his former interrogator, Saddam Hussein lied about his WMD program in order to prevent an Iranian invasion. Here’s the line of reasoning:

Saddam Hussein initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture…

“He told me he initially miscalculated… President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998…a four-day aerial attack,” says Piro. “He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.” “He didn’t believe the U.S. would invade?” asks Pelley, “No, not initially,” answers Piro…

Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells Pelley. He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

If I’m reading this correctly, Saddam’s number one concern was preventing an Iranian invasion. In order to do so, he lied about having WMDs, in order to make Iran think twice about striking. He had little concern about the blowback for his claims of WMDs from the international community, because he believed we’d retaliate simply with air strikes, as the Clinton Administration did.

Here’s the part that doesn’t make sense, brought to my attention by Allah. Once Saddam knew that hundreds of thousands of troops from the world’s most powerful militaries were barreling down his ass, why didn’t he try to stop them by admitting his lies? Yes, he may open himself a bit to an Iranian attack, but he’d stop the Coalition from toppling him.

Did he believe he’d survive the invasion and come back to power? That would require a significant suspension of disbelief. However, Saddam did continue to refer to himself as the President of Iraq even during his trial. Did he believe he’d once again rule Iraq?

SteveMG at Hot Air links this article. It outlines Saddam’s delusions, including the belief that France or Russia would stop the Coalition from overthrowing him. He was a very delusional man, which may explain his lack of reasoning as our troops prepared an invasion.

At any rate, this revelation is unlikely to stop the ever-popular Lefty meme “Bush Lied. People Died”. No matter how much you point out that the Clinton Administration also outright claimed Saddam has WMDs and carried out strikes against Iraq, some just can’t be reasoned with.