The Saddam interviews

CBS's Scott Pelly's interview with George Piro the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein is posted and it is very interesting. He begins by explaining how he gained Saddam's trust. Part of it was by projecting power over the people around Saddam to details as simple as being the only person with a watch, which meant that he controlled time too. It, in fact, took months of time to get the information from Saddam.

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"And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?" Pelley asks.

"He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq," Piro says.

"So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.

"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.

"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.

"Absolutely," Piro says.

"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, 'Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?" Pelley asks.

"He didn't. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially," Piro says.

Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. "He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage," he says.

"Saddam didn't believe that the United States would invade," Pelley remarks.

"Not initially, no," Piro says.

"Once it was clear to him that there was going to be an invasion of the country. I mean, did he actually believe that his armies could win?" Pelley asks.

"No," Piro says. "What he had asked of his military leaders and senior government officials was to give him two weeks. And at that point it would go into what he called the secret war."

"The secret war. What did he mean?" Pelley asks.

"Going from a conventional to an unconventional war," Piro says.

"So the insurgency was part of his plan from the very beginning," Pelley remarks.

"Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency," Piro says.

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What was Saddam's opinion of Osama Bin Laden?

"He considered him to be a fanatic. And as such was very wary of him. He told me, 'You can't really trust fanatics,'" Piro says.

"Didn't think of Bin Laden as an ally in his effort against the United States in this war against the United States?" Pelley asks.

"No. No. He didn't wanna be seen with Bin Laden. And didn't want to associate with Bin Laden," Piro explains.

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"So he didn't have a good understanding of how our system worked?" Pelley asks.

"No. Again, he was relying on movies to get an insight into the American culture," Piro says.

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That is a pretty telling admission as well as evidence of how far Hollywood is from reality.

Piro also confirmed that Saddam planned to reconstitute his WMD as soon as the UN backed off. The interview confirms the wisdom of our policy of regime change in Iraq.

Saddam's attempt to take credit for the insurgency is one of his least credible statements, but it does show why it is so important that we prove that we can defeat an insurgency so that future despots want make the same mistake Saddam made. The left in this country will try to spin this interview, but at its heart it destroys their "Bush lied" meme. George Soros wasted all that money on a study that was out of date in a matter of days.