'US was wrong about him', says CIA agent who interrogated Saddam

CIA analyst John Nixon who interrogated Iraq’s erstwhile dictator Saddam Hussein has said the United States was wrong about Iraq and the dictator.

In a recent interview, the official of the US spying agency said CIA’s stance on Saddam having chemical weapons and attitude for using it was wrong.

The analyst said he asked Saddam if he had ever thought of using chemical weapons against the US.



“We never thought about using weapons of mass destruction. It was not discussed. Use chemical weapons against the world? Is there anyone with full faculties who would do this? Who would use these weapons when they had not been used against us?” Saddam replied.

This was not what the United States “had expected to hear”, according to the agent.

Nixon also criticised the then US president, George W Bush, in whose tenure Iraq was invaded, saying the latter heard “only what he wanted to hear” on the matter.



Iraq’s alleged possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction had been the reason for the attack that the country faced.

Saddam said, according to the CIA agent, the US had committed a mistake by misjudging the situation because “the spirit of listening and understanding was not there”.

“You are going to fail,” Saddam told Nixon. “You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.”

Explaining this, the Iraq ruler, who was executed in December 2006, said the US did not know the language, mindset of the country and its history and therefore they were unable to understand the Iraqi people.

The article originally appeared on The Independent