Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein pretended to possess weapons of mass destruction to prevent a possible Iranian attack but never thought that America would invade Iraq and overthrow him.
The deposed Iraqi dictator, who was executed in 2006, revealed this information to Federal Bureau of Investigation's special agent George Piro, who interrogated him after his capture in 2003.
"For him, it was critical that he was still seen as the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that (faking having the weapons) would prevent the Iranians from re-invading Iraq," Piro told a TV channel.
However, the FBI special agent claimed that Saddam was keen to start the production of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "Saddam still had the engineers. The folks he needed to reconstitute his programme were still there. He wanted to pursue all of WMD... to reconstitute his entire WMD programme. This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," said Piro.
Claiming that the deposed dictator told him that he did not expect the United States to invade Iraq, Piro said, "He told me he initially miscalculated President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998... a four-day aerial attack. He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack."
It took nine months to finally capture Saddam and he bragged that he changed his routine and security to elude capture. "What he wanted to really illustrate is how he was
able to outsmart us. He told me he changed... the way he traveled. He got rid of his normal vehicles. He got rid of the protective detail that he traveled with, really just to change his signature," Piro told the channel.
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