Word: duelfer
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...revered as a giant among them for millenniums. But the Saddam who emerges from the pages of a new, comprehensive CIA report on Iraq's alleged arsenal will be remembered for the colossal misjudgments that cost him his rule. The exhaustive detail compiled by the report's author, Charles Duelfer, chief U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s and the Bush Administration's top hunter since January, richly fills in the previous portrait of a paranoid and brutal dictator who believed that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were the prime tools with which to advance his extravagant ambitions. Drawn from lengthy...
...Duelfer's report also gives an extraordinary, intimate glimpse into the dictator's behavior. Lieutenants thought his psychology was "powerfully shaped by a deprived and violent boyhood in a village and tribal society," especially by the strong influence of his xenophobic guardian uncle. One aide said Saddam "loved the use of force," confirming the tale that in 1982 he "ordered the execution" of a disloyal minister "and delivery of the dismembered body to the victim's wife...
...greatest mystery, though, was his long game of deception: if Saddam had destroyed his WMD to escape from sanctions, why did he work so hard from 1991 until he was overthrown in 2003 to perpetuate the belief he still had them? The reason, suggests Duelfer, lay in how he saw the "survival of himself, his regime and his legacy." While the U.S. was fixated on Saddam's threat, he focused on his strategies for Iran and considered WMD essential to keeping his neighbor in check. So he was driven by what the report calls "a difficult balancing act": getting...
...core, the Bush Administration's rationale for going to war with Iraq was simple enough. As the President stated in the fall of 2002, Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons, [and] it is seeking nuclear weapons." The central conclusion of the newly issued Duelfer report is also fairly simple: many U.S. assumptions about the state of Iraq's weapons were just plain wrong. Here's a look at some of the key misjudgments--and what we know...
WHAT WE KNOW NOW Saddam hoped to relaunch a chemical-weapons program once sanctions ended, but the Duelfer report says there are no "credible indications" that Iraq produced any agents after destroying its stockpile in 1991. It concludes that there were no chemical-weapons-related materials found at that site, contrary to Powell's suggestions...