Former CIA Agent John Nixon, the man who interrogated Saddam Hussein and briefed Bush Jr. and Dick Chaney, reveals how intelligence got everything dead wrong in Iraq. He goes into when he was summoned to give a detailed presentation to George W. Bush at the Oval Office back in 2007. He states that Vice President Dick Cheney made a bad joke, “You sure Saddam didn’t say where he put those vials of anthrax?” It was not very appropriate given the fact that America had lost more than 4,000 troops. He goes into how Saddam thought Iraq and America would become closer because he had suppressed the terrorists, and Iraq was not run by religious zealots.
“Iraq is not a terrorist nation,” Saddam said. “We did not have a relationship with [Osama] bin Laden, and did not have weapons of mass destruction… and were not a threat to our neighbors. But the American President [George W Bush] said Iraq wanted to attack his daddy and said we had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”
Nixon also noted that Saddam warned that revolution comes with hot summers in the Middle East:
“Next summer, when it is hot, they might revolt against you. The summer of 1958 got a little hot. In the 1960s, when it was hot, we had a revolution. You might tell that to President Bush!”
Interesting read, pulling back the curtain to catch a glimpse of reality.
