Irony of the day: Saddam feared countrymen more than the U.S.

[beachmom]

Just read this in the NYT, and I just couldn't stop laughing bitterly at this article full of such irony, one couldn't make it up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/international/middleeast/12saddam.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5094&en=84de85596df57700&hp&ex=1142226000&partner=homepage

A few choice paragraphs:

The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified United States military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Mr. Hussein was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.

snip

The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.

snip

Despite the lopsided defeat his forces suffered during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein did not see the United States as his primary adversary. His greater fear was a Shiite uprising, like the one that shook his government after the 1991 war.

And, finally, my favorite paragraph:

Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed we had these weapons," he told interrogators after the war, according to the Iraq Survey Group report.


Go read the whole article, but the thing that I get from it is what a disintegrating state was Iraq BEFORE we invaded. I swear, the country might have descended into chaos WITHOUT the U.S. invasion, then the whole world could have come together to try to put it back together again. Instead, we are despised the world over as an agressor AND we're faced with the prospect of a failed state that we're being blamed for, when it may have been inevitable anyway.

[ProSense]

1. Yes, that's the real irony.

I truly believe Saddam would have been taken out by the opposition sooner rather than later. The lives of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis and their country would not have been destroyed.

[beachmom]

2. It still may have descended into civil war, though, just like Bosnia

But it would have been THEIR war, not ours. NATO and the U.N. would have gotten involved, as well as the Arab League, to try to rectify the situation through consensus. But even if it ended up being similar to today (probably minus al Qaeda who would have been less interested in Iraq without the U.S.), that would have been less tragic than our going in and then not securing the country. You may found this hopelessly geeky, but I'm a believer in the Prime Directive from Star Trek. You don't interfere with other country's affairs. Because once your troops are on the ground, you have changed the variables, and even made things worse, regardless of any good intentions.

The thing that was interesting about what John Burns of the NYT said on Bill Maher Friday night was that EVEN IF the U.S. hadn't made all of those collossal errors in '03 and early '04, the result STILL might have been civil war. He's basically saying that even if the best plan ever had been used with enough troops and no Abu Ghraib had occurred, Iraq still may have been a hopeless case. Lots of revelations for me this weekend.

[ProSense]

4. Maybe not.

After I posted, I thought about use of the word "opposition" when in fact it would likely have been an inside job.

[beachmom]

5. You mean like one of his sons or maybe a military coup?

You know, a Mousharaf (Pakistan) style military dictatorship is looking awfully attractive in Iraq about now!! Okay, call me the realist that I am, but I'm thinking peaceful stability is better than chaotic, violent democracy, especially in a country with no democratic tradition.

[ProSense]

6. Possibly

This is a 2004 report, but the climate was certainly ripe for it.

Mutuality of Fear

Saddam feared that his subordinates could gather enough strength to challenge his position, or even a particular policy, and he acted to prevent it. He was routinely suspicious of subordinates—even those with long standing loyalty. His subordinates remained fearful of him, and they were incapable of common action against him or key policies.


Tariq ‘Aziz said that he opposed the invasion of Kuwait, but could not dissuade Saddam. Asked why he did not resign in protest, he denied he thought he would be killed, but said, “ . . . there would be no income, no job.” Tariq ‘Aziz denied Saddam killed anyone personally while President. “But he would tell the security services to take care of things , and they would take care of it.”

Ramadan believed that from late 2002, Iraqi policy toward the UN and the United States was taking the Regime toward a disastrous war, but he said, “I couldn’t convince Saddam that an attack was coming. I didn’t try that hard. He was monitoring my performance in managing inspectors.”

‘Abd-al-Tawab ‘Abdallah Al Mullah Huwaysh was sacked as Minister of Industry in 1988 after a clash with Husayn Kamil and was ostracized for nine years. He believed he only avoided prison because of Ramadan’s intervention with Saddam. According to Huwaysh, no minister ever argued in meetings against Saddam’s stated position because it “ . . . was unforgivable. It would be suicide.”

‘Ali Hasan Al Majid said he feared Saddam and cited the killing of many people close to Saddam as the basis of his fear.

Huwaysh said Saddam “loved the use of force.”

Fear worked both ways. At Saddam’s “one-on-one” weekly meetings with individual heads of security agencies, he would always be accompanied by a bodyguard, according to Hamid Yusif Hammadi, Minister of Culture and Information. “Saddam did not trust anyone, even his cousin.”

Nevertheless, Saddam said he believed “Good personal relations bring out the best in people.”

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1.html#sect4

[sandnsea]

3. Absolutely

We should have pushed for a UN - Arab League humanitarian peacekeeping operation in the north and south, with a real reconstruction effort. And then just squeezed Saddam out from both ends. Invading was just stupid.