Brian Faughnan at the Weekly Standard isn’t too bright. He picks up on a little tidbit in the Spanish Downing Street Minutes and then takes it for a little ride. George W. Bush was talking to Spanish President José María Aznar, a month before the invasion of Iraq. Aznar wanted to know whether it was true that Saddam Hussein was considering exile. Bush responded:
“…The Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he’s indicated that he’d be ready to go into exile if he’s allowed to take $1 billion dollars and all the information he wants about weapons of mass destruction. Gaddafi has told Berlusconi that Saddam Hussein wants to leave. Mubarak tells us that in that case, there’s a strong possibility that he’d be assassinated.”
Now, Saddam Hussein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction and he would have had no need for information about dormant programs while he was lunching at Idi Amin’s old haunts in Jeddah. So, why did George W. Bush tell Aznar that Saddam had made this a condition of his accepting exile?
Because George W. Bush is a liar. That’s pretty simple logic…no?
Not to the wingnuts…
This begs the question: why would Saddam attach so much importance to information on Iraq’s WMD program? The mainstream media, the Democratic party, and many others have accepted that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, and that there is no reason to think that Iraq’s program posed a threat to anyone at the time of the US invasion. Small caches of WMD and evidence that Saddam intended to reconstitute the program at some point in the future have been downplayed in light of the failure to find the stockpiles of weapons that most intelligence agencies believed to exist.
Yet if the dominant narrative is correct–that Iraq posed no WMD threat–then why did Saddam stake his life on concealing information about the program? After all, he had to think that if he did not leave Iraq, there was every chance that he would be killed during or after the invasion. Why would it have been so important to hide evidence that merely confirmed the lack of any threat?
The only logical reason for making this a condition of his agreement to exile was that he believed the program was more advanced than it really was, or that he intended to augment it. In either case, it further bolsters the case that Saddam remained a threat to the region (at least), and that it was wise to depose him.
After reading that you may need a balm for the stupid.
The question isn’t why Saddam made this a condition for exile. Saddam didn’t offer to go into exile. He discussed going into exile with the Egyptians. But he didn’t ask for information on WMD. Bush told Aznar this fairy tale because there was no evidence to back up Powell’s presentation and that was becoming painfully clear. He was trying to shoehorn in some evidence to impress Aznar. Either that, or someone was lying to Bush and he was too much of a dimwit to understand how stupid such a story sounded.
Bush also refused to consider this offer, which, considering the condequences, should lead him to a fate similar to Saddam’s.
