Foreign Affairs presents some the most insightful analysis of the geopolitical picture of any magazine. I frequently spend hours browsing its archive to find some incredible nuggets like Condoleezza Rice’s Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest. Once again Foreign Affairs has a piece that is a must read: Saddam’s Delusions: The View from the Inside.
It presents an inner view based on interviews with the key people and on what was found on the ground in Iraq.
Some highlights:
According to Aziz, Saddam’s confidence was firmly rooted in his belief in the nexus between the economic interests of France and Russia and his own strategic goals: "France and Russia each secured millions of dollars worth of trade and service contracts in Iraq, with the implied understanding that their political posture with regard to sanctions on Iraq would be pro-Iraqi. In addition, the French wanted sanctions lifted to safeguard their trade and service contracts in Iraq. Moreover, they wanted to prove their importance in the world as members of the Security Council — that they could use their veto to show they still had power."
Wow, talk about powerful and thought-provoking. Perhaps that gives new insight into what has happened the past few years with our "allies". It is unconscionable that there hasn’t been more discussion on this in traditional news media.
A question I have often wondered about is why so much of the infrastructure was not destroyed by the Iraqi army, now the answer is clear:
Even with U.S. tanks crossing the Iraqi border, an internal revolt remained Saddam’s biggest fear. In order to quell any postwar revolt, he would need the bridges to remain intact and the land in the south to remain unflooded. On this basis, Saddam planned his moves.
Another gems indeed. How is this for believing your own bs:
Americans may have listened with amusement to the seemingly obvious fabrications of Muhammad Said al-Sahaf, Iraq’s information minister (nicknamed "Baghdad Bob" by the media). But the evidence now clearly shows that Saddam and those around him believed virtually every word issued by their own propaganda machine.
Why wasn’t Saddam more forthcoming on WMDs? The author’s cite two primary reasons, Saddam had a fear that Israel would attack if they knew that he definitively didn’t have WMD, and secondly, the notion that Iraq *may* have WMDs played very well in the Arab street. America was also duped, after a "decade of deceit" when Saddam came clean and tried to comply America wouldn’t believe him.
How is it possible Saddam believed so strongly that he could win against the onslaught of the United States military? Saddam was blatantly lied to by his most trusted advisors about the true state of the Iraqi military. Saddam’s brutality was to be the source of his eventual downfall as his advisors so strongly feared for their lives that they couldn’t tell him the truth.
Saddam had a particularly interesting way of selecting the "leaders" in his regime. He wanted them to be as closely related to him as possible, too stupid to ever come up with a plan to overthrow him, and finally too cowardly to ever participate in such a plot.
Did Saddam purposefully lay the foundation for the insurgents that plague American forces now? The article doesn’t really make a case for it.
A highly recommended read…
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