"Why don’t you ask me about politics? You could learn a lot from me,"
Hussein barked. He was especially vocal on the rough treatment he’d
received from the troops who brought him in, launching a long diatribe.
I was incredulous. Here was a man who didn’t think twice about killing
his own people complaining about a few scratches. He lifted his
dishdasha to show the damage to his left leg. I saw an old scar. Was it
the bullet wound, I asked him. He assented with a grunt – the final
piece of proof. We’d got him.
"Iraq is not a terrorist nation,"
he said. "We did not have a relationship with (Osama) bin Laden, and did
not have weapons of mass destruction… and were not a threat to our
neighbours. But the American President [George W Bush] said Iraq wanted
to attack his daddy and said we had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ 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?"
Denying involvement in 9/11; "Look
at who was involved. What countries did they come from? Saudi Arabia.
And this [ringleader] Muhammad Atta, was he an Iraqi? No. He was
Egyptian. Why do you think I was involved in the attacks?
Saddam
had actually believed 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer because
Washington would need his secular government to help fight religious
extremism.
How woefully wrong he had been.
