John Perkins on Saddam Hussein

“We also tried to do that to Saddam Hussein. When he didn't come around, the economic hit men tried to bring him around. We tried to assassinate him. But that was an interesting point, because he had pretty loyal security forces, and in addition he had a lot of look-alike doubles, and what you don't want to be is a bodyguard to a look-alike double and you think it's the president and you accept a lot of money to assassinate him and you assassinate the look-alike, because if you do that, afterwards your life and your family's isn't worth very much, so we were unable to get through to Saddam Hussein, and that's why we sent the military in...”

“We wanted that final deal, similar to the one we'd struck with Saudi Arabia. We wanted to get Saddam Hussein to really tie in to our system, and he refused to do that. He accepted our fighter jets and our tanks and our chemical plants that he used to produce chemical weapons that we knew were being used against the Kurds and the Iranians. He accepted all that, but he wouldn't quite tie into our system in such a big way that he would bring in the huge development organizations to rebuild his country, as the Saudis did, in a Western image. And that's what we were trying to convince him to do and also to guarantee that he would always trade oil for U.S. dollars, instead of Euros, and that he would keep the price of oil within limits acceptable to us. He would not go along with those things. If he had, he would still be president, Amy.”