The Saddam I have come to know

By David
Palkki

Best Defense department of dictatorial archives

I'm
grateful to Tom for inviting me to present a few highlights from The Saddam Tapes: The Inner
Workings of a Tyrant's Regime, 1978-2001, which Cambridge University Press just published. I had the
good fortune to co-edit this study, with Kevin Woods and Mark Stout, at the
Institute for Defense Analyses for the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(Policy). Our book is based on a review of several thousand audio files (and a
smaller number of video files) that U.S.-led forces captured from Saddam
Hussein's regime. The recordings cover several decades' worth of Saddam's
meetings with his cabinet, Revolutionary Command Council, generals, tribal
sheikhs, visiting dignitaries and others. 

The
book is intended more as an invitation to scholars to conduct research using
digital copies of the original records (and translations) at the Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) than as an effort to
compile definitive conclusions or policy recommendations, yet certain patterns
and insights have surfaced as a result of our efforts. In this blog I'll touch
on three. 

--First,
Saddam was not in America's hip pocket during the 1980s. In fact, he was far
more antagonistic toward and skeptical of the United States, even at the height
of U.S. support for Iraq during the 1980s, than scholars have acknowledged. The
United States was behind the Iranian Revolution, Saddam privately asserted, "to
scare the Gulf people so they can have a [military] presence and arrange the
situation in the region." After Iran-Contra revelations made clear that the
United States had clandestinely armed Iran and provided it with military
intelligence on Iraq, Saddam complained to his inner circle that the Americans
were still "conspiring bastards."  From
Saddam's perspective, the entire episode was intended to harm Iraq (not to help
the Contras or free U.S. hostages). He referred to the incident as "Irangate,"
held at least seven meetings to analyze the significance of the revelations,
and described U.S. behavior as a "stab in the back."  In May 1988, Saddam instructed his advisors,
"We have to be aware of America more than the Iranians" because "they are now
the police for Iran, they will turn anything they find over to Iran." In September
1988, just after the war had ended, Saddam expressed conviction to his advisers
that the United States was behind a recent attempt on his life.[[BREAK]]

--Second,
when it came to his worldview, what Saddam said in public was very similar to
what he said in private. Though Americans often discount what dictators say in
public, Saddam was generally sincere in his public rhetoric. Saddam's
conspiratorial outlook, specifically his anti-Semitism, provides a case in
point. Some scholars have presented his anti-Semitic public speeches as
insincere rhetoric designed to solidify his domestic base or accrue Iraq
support from the Arab street, and deemed it unreflective of his actual
thinking. The frequency of Saddam's anti-Semitic comments in his private
meetings suggests otherwise. In multiple recordings, Saddam spoke of the need
for the Iraqi leadership to read and study The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, an infamous anti-Semitic tract forged by the Tsar's secret police. He
explained in a meeting from the early 1990s, "I do not believe that there was
any falsification with regard to those Zionist objectives, specifically with
regard to the Zionist desire to usurping-usurping the economies of people."
"The Jews are greedy," he explained to his advisers on a separate occasion.
Saddam's anti-Semitism was tempered by respect for his formidable adversary and
by his famous pragmatism, and he certainly had legitimate reasons to fear
Israeli intrigues, yet his anti-Semitic hate speech still stands in need of
greater recognition and analysis by scholars as an important aspect of his
belief system. 

--Third,
Saddam believed that Iraqi acquisition of a nuclear weapon would enable it to
liberate Israeli-held Palestinian territories. Iraq did not seek nuclear
weapons to initiate a nuclear first strike against Israel; rather, Saddam
explained, he wanted a nuclear weapon to deter Israeli nuclear weapon use so
Iraq could wage a bloody war of attrition:

The most important requirement is that we be present in Iraq
and Syria and will have planned ahead that the enemy, the air force, that the
enemy will come and attack and destroy, etc. We should bear it and keep going -
and go put pressure on our Soviet friends and make them understand our need for
one weapon - we only want one weapon.  We
want, when the Israeli enemy attacks our civilian establishments, to have
weapons to attack the Israeli civilian establishments. We are willing to sit
and refrain from using it, except when the enemy attacks civilian
establishments in Iraq or Syria, so that we can guarantee the long war that is
destructive to our enemy, and take at our leisure each meter of land and drown
the enemy with rivers of blood. We have no vision for a war that is any less
than this. 

For
more along these lines, see here or here. 

Of
course there are many other insights and really cool transcripts, but for those
you'll need to read the
book. 

David Palkki is the Deputy Director of the
National Defense University's Conflict Records Research Center.