CBS News has had the privileged of interviewing George Piro on 60 Minutes. Piro was the FBI agent assigned to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2003. In all honesty, I’m surprised Piro was allowed to discuss the events that unfolded publicly, especially before Bush had ended his term.
To preface my thoughts on the interview, I just want to go over some of the details of the war. First and foremost, the casus belli for invading Iraq, as summerized aptly by Wikipedia:
The rationale for the invasion offered by U.S. President George W. Bush and coalition supporters included the allegation that Iraq possessed and was actively developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in violation of a 1991 agreement. U.S. officials argued that Iraq posed an imminent, urgent, and immediate threat to the United States, its people, allies, and interests. The supporting intelligence was widely criticized, and weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD. After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its WMD programs in 1991 and had none at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production if and when the Iraq sanctions were lifted. Although some earlier degraded remnants of misplaced or abandoned WMD were found, they were not the weapons for which the coalition invaded. Some U.S. officials claimed Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were cooperating, but no evidence of any collaborative relationship has been found. Other reasons for the invasion stated by officials included concerns about Iraq’s financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Iraqi government human rights abuses, spreading democracy, and Iraq’s oil reserves.
So, the United States and its allies invaded a country and removed its government on suspicion of support for Al Queda and suspicion that Iraq possessed biological, chemical, and/or nuclear weapons.
Now, also know - during the course of the war, between 104,000 to 223,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed (Iraqi Health Ministry casualty survey for the WHO, criticized for being too conservative in its estimates), 9,000 to 10,000 Iraqi police/military personnel (post-invasion), 4,000 American soldiers, and 500 insurgents. Additionally, some 28,000 Americans soldiers have been injured.
That’s between 117,500 and 237,500 human beings killed. FedEx Field, the NFL’s largest stadium, can hold a mere 91,000 people. Imagine two FedEx Fields full of human corpses. It takes two of those stadiums to fit the result of the Iraq War into.
On top of the loss of life, the American taxpayer is footing a bill for nearly half a trillion dollars - and the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that, when all is said and done, that bill will be around two trillion. That’s a two and twelve zeros. $2,000,000,000,000.
Right-o. So now, after all of this, George Piro tells the world at large what Saddam had to say. This is, for better or for worse, the best truth we’ll ever get from their side of the dispute - this is what Saddam has left us as way of explanation.
Iraq, Saddam, and Al Queda. Were they working together? is the second-biggest question America had on its mind pre-war. Did Saddam have a part to play - small or large - in 9/11? There was doubt cast on the intel pointing to a link - sadly, a lot of it came just after the invasion was undertaken. Was there a link? Was it true?
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.
Piro says Saddam thought that Bin Laden was a threat to him and his regime.
That makes sense. Osama is a man who works towards destabilizing governments. Saddam had historically been very wary of dissent and beat it down mercilessly. Osama had taken aid from America before, and now turned against it. What would stop him from turning his back to Iraq? Why Saddam trust a man like Bin Laden?
Then, we have the big one - the issue of WMDs. The aluminum tubes and the chemical-weapon-producing trucks. Iraq’s WMDs were the smoking gun that were the real cause of the invasion. There was widespread criticism of this argument; most people simply refused to believe Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Wolf Blitzer reported on the possibility of Iraq having WMDs was grossly exaggerated. We all remember the yellow cake debacle.
No functional WMDs were found in Iraq. No nuclear warheads. No mustard gas. No anthrax or smallpox. Iraq did have some of those things - it used mustard gas in the ’80s. What happened to Iraq’s WMDs, their smoking gun? Piro told us:
In talking casually about that speech, Saddam began to tell the story of his weapons. It was a breakthrough that had taken five months.
“Oh, you couldn’t imagine the excitement that I was feeling at that point,” Piro remembers.
“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.
The article does not go on to mention it, but the interviewer confirms with Piro that Saddam gave the order to dismantle their remaining WMDs himself.
I will also remind you of two people: Dr. Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and former Director General of the IAEA, and Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN. Both of these people went to bat for Iraq; they said that there were no WMDs. Annan also went on record as saying the the preemptive invasion of Iraq was “from our point of view, from the [United Nations] charter point of view it was illegal.”
From the mouth of the defeated Saddam himself, there was no smoking gun, and there would be no body count that could ever compare to the toll we took had we left Iraq to its own devices.
Knowing all of this now does not do the hundred-and-sixty-thousand or so dead any good. Saying this was a mistake will not put Iraq back together; it will not stomp out the insurgency overnight. The United States has created a mess and must find some way to resolve the myriad of problems Iraq is now facing.
All we have left now is accountability. Perhaps the President and the Vice President manipulated the truth. Perhaps they lied. These are not questions I can begin to answer; Kucinich may have an answer before the year is out, or the historians may know in thirty years or so. Perhaps there will never be a suitable answer.
But, the question that I have for you all, my dearest readers, is this - was it worth it?
Two trillion dollars that could be spent on education, infrastructure, food, or social services. Four thousand Americans taken from their families - and legions more with lost limbs. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis, people who simply wanted to live their lives, killed in cold blood for somebody else’s war. Families torn apart, homes bombed out, power and water supplies destroyed.
I must admit that I was a warhawk at the beginning. In January 2003, I was a big supporter of getting rid of Saddam on the off-chance that he did have WMDs. The arguments were difficult to make then; they basically amounted to ‘WHAT IF the doubt is misplaced? Are you saying we should stand by and wait for him to kill a hundred thousand people?’. I was young and foolish and wanted to see some shock and awe on CNN because it would look cool. Horrible.
But, think back to 2003. We had doubt about the truth - a lot of it. Yet, if we were wrong, ten thousand people could be vaporized or poisoned and that would be that for them. If we had waited a few more months - the five months it took for the yellowcake story to come to light and the Plame affair to begin - this might have been avoided. Think about that - a hundred thousand human beings would still alive and with their families if we had waited just five more months.
I’d like to think that it wasn’t worth it.
