A close aide to Saddam Hussein says the Iraqi dictator did in fact get rid of his weapons of mass destruction but deliberately kept the world guessing about it in an effort to divide the international community and stave off a US invasion.
The strategy, which turned out to be a serious miscalculation, was designed to make the Iraqi dictator look strong in the eyes of the Arab world, while countries such as France and Russia were wary of joining an American-led attack. At the same time, Saddam retained the technical know-how and brain power to restart the programs at any time.
US defense officials and weapons experts are considering this guessing-game theory as the search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons continues. If true, it would indicate there was no imminent unconventional weapons threat from Iraq, an argument US President George W. Bush used to go to war.
Saddam's alleged weapons bluff was detailed by an Iraqi official who assisted Saddam for many years. The official was not part of the national leadership but his job provided him daily contact with the dictator and insight into the regime's decision-making process during the past decade and in its critical final days.
The official refused to be identified, citing fear of assassination by Saddam's paramilitaries who, he said, remain active throughout Iraq. But in several interviews, the former aide detailed what he said were the reasons behind Saddam's disinformation campaign -- which ultimately backfired by spurring, rather than deterring a US invasion.
According to the aide, by the mid-1990s "it was common knowledge among the leadership" that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons.
But Saddam remained convinced that an ambiguous stance about the status of Iraq's weapons programs would deter an American attack.
"He repeatedly told me: `These foreigners, they only respect strength, they must be made to believe we are strong,'" the aide said.
Publicly Saddam denied having unconventional weapons. But from 1998 until 2002, he prevented UN inspectors from working in the country and when they finally returned in November, 2002, they often complained that Iraq wasn't fully cooperating.
Iraqi scientists, including those currently held by the US military, have maintained that no new unconventional weapons programs were started in recent years and that all the materials from previous programs were destroyed.
Both Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have come under fire in recent weeks as weapons hunters come up empty handed and prewar intelligence is questioned.
Before the invasion, the British government claimed Saddam could deploy unconventional weapons within 45 minutes. The Bush administration insisted the threat was so immediate that the world couldn't afford to wait for UN inspectors to wind up their searches. Despite the warnings, Iraqi troops never used such weapons during the war.
US intelligence officials at the Pentagon in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said some experts had raised the theory that Iraq put out false information to persuade its enemies that it retained prohibited chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
"That explanation has plausibility," said Robert Einhorn a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. "But the disposition of those missing weapons and materials still has to be explained somehow."
Iraq's claims that it destroyed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons materials could never be verified by UN inspectors who repeatedly requested proof.
However, UN inspectors, who scoured Iraq for three and a half months before the war, never found any evidence of renewed weapons programs.
"The longer that one does not find any weapons in spite of people coming forward and being rewarded for giving information, etc., the more I think it is important that we begin to ask ourselves if there were no weapons, why was it that Iraq conducted itself as it did for so many years?" Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, told AP in June.
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