Allan R. Millett on Saddam Hussein

“On August 2, 1990, the very day when President Bush announced a plan to focus defense planning on regional conflicts, the Iraqi mechanized divisions of Saddam Hussein plunged across the border of Kuwait and in six days eliminated conventional military resistance against an outnumbered and uneven Kuwaiti defense force. On August 8, with his crack Republican Guard divisions closing in on the border of Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi dictator declared the "lost province" of Kuwait annexed to Iraq. Saddam Hussein condemned the Kuwaiti ruling family, the al-Sabahs, for mistreating foreign workers and supporting Iraqi dissidents; however, for Saddam the invasion represented primarily a financial coup de main that would place Kuwaiti oil in Iraqi hands. It was a desperate attempt to increase the oil revenues he needed to pay his war debts, rebuild his army and air force, pacify his Sunni Muslim supporters, pursue his grandiose plans to build nuclear and chemical strategic weapons, and replace the now-lost largesse from the Soviet Union and the anti-Iranian Western nations.”

“Taking his own counsel, which he admitted rested on his religious convictions and intuition, George W. Bush decided after becoming president that he would rid the world of Saddam Hussein, which already had congressional sanction in 1998. Bush made several public statements about his mission to remove "evil" tyrants and destroy governments that sponsored terrorists. Bush's instincts took more stimulus from Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives in the national security system. Even before 9/11 the White House had investigated what a global war on terrorism might entail. For a president impatient with the complexities of foreign policy, the national security analyses provided little comfort. No other government (not even Israel's) had much stomach for redefining the continuing struggle against terrorism as a war upon a particular state, including Iraq. Even after the shock of 9/11 and the start of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, the Bush administration found little international support in making Iraq Target Number One for international action. Instead, the consensus, communicated by the State Department and the CIA, was that Saddam Hussein's days were numbered and that his ability to attack his neighbors had been largely, if not completely, destroyed. Saddam was "contained." The president did not accept these assurances.”

“As the Bush administration prepared for war, Saddam Hussein retreated further and further into his own fantasy world. He believed that the United States would not attack because Americans lacked the will to take casualties. His forces could and would kill so many Americans that any Desert Storm II offensive would stall well short of Baghdad, He allowed no one in his inner circle to question his delusions. He also believed that France and Russia, his allies, would deter the United States from displacing him because that was in their economic interests. He planned to save his oil wells and air forces for another postwar rebirth. The WMD threat may have been real to Saddam Hussein and other true believers like his sons, but the missiles, warheads, and deadly chemicals were scattered, hidden, forgotten, and never existed, although few Iraqis outside Chemical Ali's circle knew it. The Iraqi high command was so stacked with loyalists that the generals could easily assume someone else's part of the armed forces had real capability. Information-sharing was an invitation to disgrace and death.”