Tenet of the Iraq war

The ex-CIA director examines Saddam Hussein's foolish bluff about WMD.

By John Hughes

from the May 9, 2007 edition

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Provo, Utah - In George Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA," there is an intriguing phrase that pinpoints the miscalculation that may have done much to trigger the Iraq war.

The former CIA director, who served both Presidents Clinton and Bush, writes, "Before the war, we didn't understand that [Saddam Hussein] was bluffing, and he didn't understand that we were not." Mr. Tenet was referring to the fact that Mr. Hussein was a "genius at what the intelligence community calls 'denial and deception' – leading us to believe things that weren't true."

While asserting to the United Nations that he had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Hussein perpetuated to others – including his own generals – the myth that he did possess them. Thus American and British intelligence agencies, mindful that Hussein had earlier used WMD against his own people, and mindful that evidence emerged after the earlier Gulf war that his regime had been much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons capacity than they had believed, concluded that he might have again clandestinely developed WMD.

The intelligence agencies of a slew of other countries, such as France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, were similarly convinced. The Germans had their own prized informant, "Curve Ball," who gave them graphic accounts of Hussein's hidden weaponry. In the end, it all proved not to be true. The clever shell game that Hussein had played – assuring the United Nations Security Council that he was without WMD, while signaling a warning to others that he did have them and could use them if threatened – was his undoing.

Tenet says Hussein was "a fool" for not understanding, especially after 9/11, that the United States "was not going to risk underestimating his WMD capabilities as we had done once before." The irony, says Tenet, is that [Hussein] could have allowed UN inspectors free run of the country, and if they found nothing, "UN sanctions would have melted. In that case, he might be alive and living in a palace today. Without sanctions, he would be well on his way to possessing WMD." Thus his bluff failed, and he miscalculated the will of the US to act with military force against him.

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