One of my best friends, and someone I served with in the United States Marine Corps, sent me John Nixon’s book, Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.
I found Nixon’s reflections a bit redundant, but also quite fascinating. His politics are unclear, but his worldview and ideology is wholly committed to the concept of American Exceptionalism. While he provided many detailed critiques of the CIA’s internal operations, governmental cronyism and institutional paralysis, Nixon never mentions the fact that tens of millions of people around the world knew what the CIA and the Bush Administration didn’t: namely, that Saddam Hussein and the government of Iraq didn’t possess Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), nor did Saddam have any connection to, or knowledge of, the attacks of 9/11.
Turns out, as many scholars of Iraq and Saddam knew, the “Butcher of Baghdad” wasn’t interested in caliphates or religious extremism. Saddam was a gangster, a thug, a strongman. Saddam’s ideology was power for the sake of power. Saddam’s political aspirations were limited to the nation-state of Iraq. He had no regional, let alone global vision. And most importantly, he viewed Sunni extremism and Wahhabism as the primary threat to his rule. As Nixon notes throughout his book, “Saddam thought that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would move the United States closer to his Ba’athist regime” (2).
According to Nixon, “The CIA was woefully unprepared on Iraq, even though it seemed clear by late 2001 that the United States was going to war with Saddam Hussein” (35). After 30+ years of dealing with Saddam, the elites within the CIA and the US Government knew virtually nothing of significance about the Iraqi dictator.
Often, people assume that the CIA is an omnipowerful force with unlimited resources. Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s not the case. Throughout Nixon’s book, it’s clear that the CIA, like all institutions, is extremely flawed, with individuals holding competing ideological, career and personal interests.
Cronyism within the CIA was a major problem. As Nixon mentions, “My managers claimed to embrace ‘outside the box’ thinking, but they always rushed to the same individuals—usually the people they hung around with on the weekends—to provide the same old answers” (35). I found the same to be true in the USMC, where “outside the box” thinking was utterly discouraged. The same is true in every bureaucratic institution, regardless of its specific orientation.
In 1999, Saddam’s forces killed Muhammed Sadiq al-Sadr. At the time, the CIA knew virtually nothing about the Sadrists, even though Sadiq al-Sadr was one of the most important Shia cleric in Najaf and also the father of Muqtada al-Sadr, “later the leader of the Shia Mahdi Army and a steadfast foe of the Coalition Provisional Authority” (39).
In hindsight, Nixon admits that the CIA “missed the Shia threat to Saddam’s grip on power before 9/11.” It was assumed that a “Sunni strongman” would eventually replace Saddam. The agency was convinced the Shiites “didn’t matter” (39).
Nixon mentions that one of his colleagues wrote a paper suggesting that Saddam used ghostwriters for his novel, Zabibah and the King, which was Saddam’s primary focus back in 2003. Nixon, like most Iraq experts, understood that Saddam would never use ghostwriters and always penned his own speeches throughout the years (40). Somehow, the most powerful intelligence agency in the world couldn’t even get that right.
A combination of laziness and ideology fed the notion that Saddam wasn’t a complex individual who was operating in an extremely complex environment: “We [Iraq specialists/analysts] had a pretty good bead on the Iraqi dictator, but we hadn’t been as perceptive in fitting him into the larger geopolitical picture” (45). In other words, many security and intelligence analysts within the intelligence community accepted a “crude caricature” of Saddam, a caricature that undoubtedly fit comfortably within their own worldview.
Furthermore, the intelligence community is a very divided series of institutions, individuals and apparatuses. In other words, there are competing narratives, interests and facts, as opposed to a unified vision. I think this is important to mention because a lot of people on the left, and many people on the right, see the CIA as a homogenous force where everyone agrees on the issues and implements a series of plans that are always executed in a perfect manner. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For instance, during the initial stages of the war and the hunt for Saddam, intelligence analysts regularly debated whether or not the “insurgency would be decapitated” if/when Saddam was captured or killed (55). While most of the CIA assumed the insurgency would continue unabated, some CIA analysts and most military intelligence officials assumed Saddam’s capture/killing would mark the end of insurgency.
Once Saddam was captured, the next challenge for Nixon and his colleagues was to properly interrogate the disposed Iraqi leader. Nixon mentions that the US government and military was never prepared to capture Saddam alive. All the agencies and individuals within those agencies figured Saddam would either be killed in pursuit or commit suicide. “When he was captured, no one knew what to do,” Nixon writes. “The CIA had told us to get ready to interrogate one of the twentieth century’s most notorious dictators, but we didn’t know ho much time we’d have or when the debriefings would start or end” (68).
After several days of interrogating Saddam, the CIA sent one of its lawyers to the compound in which Saddam was being held to instruct Nixon and his colleagues how to handle Saddam while he was in captivity. Eventually, the lawyer told Nixon, “The less he has to say to us, the better. If he says anything of substance, then we will have to document it and you will have to appear in court” (70). Nixon never expands on this experience, but this particular exchange sheds some light into the dysfunctional and contradictory nature of governmental institutions, particularly military and intelligence apparatuses.
Another example that Nixon cites is the fact that the Army, at the time, possessed a substantial number of Iraqi records and internal documents that Nixon and the team of interrogators could’ve used to make the debriefing process more fruitful. He didn’t find out about this collection of useful material until two years after he interrogated Saddam (85). Nixon flaims that his “CIA team knew far more about Saddam and Iraq than the FBI debriefers who followed us, but [the CIA] ended up getting far less time to question him (88).
Nixon also notes that the CIA, while more knowledgable than the FBI on Iraq and Saddam, was nonetheless wrong about most of what they thought they knew about Saddam’s personal life and political views. For example, contrary to the CIA’s assumptions, Saddam had a good childhood, was in good physical condition when captured, and was becoming more religious as he aged, though Nixon is quick to point out that Saddam’s newfound religiosity doesn’t equate to sympathy for Al Qaeda-style organizations (91-93).
Saddam loathed the Persians and continually talked about his disdain for not only Iran, but also King Abdullah of Jordan and Bashar al-Assad of Syria (66,96). In 1979 Saddam organized a Ba’ath Party conference where suspected spies and traitors were “purged and later executed.” Saddam’s excuse? He suspected Syrian Ba’athists of plotting to overthrow his government in Baghdad (100).
With regard to religion, Nixon writes, “Saddam held a dim view of religion in politics—particularly when it did not suit his needs. He was especially wary of Wahhabism, the austere form of Islamic fundamentalism with roots in Saudi Arabia. Saddam thought that Sunni fundamentalism was a greater threat to his regime than were Iraq’s majority Shiites or even the Iranians” (107). This came as a surprise to Nixon who long thought Saddam primarily feared a Shia revolution. Once again, the agency’s intel was incorrect.
“Saddam believed Wahhabism would spread faster than anyone realized because it excited people who were disillusioned by the failures of Arab political leaders over the previous fifty years. He said that Iraq’s borders with Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran made it an ideal base for fundamentalism,” writes Nixon (108).
Saddam figured that if radical Sunnis could infiltrate Iraq’s government and local communities, it would be very hard to eradicate them without alienating large swaths of Iraq’s Sunni community. Hence, Saddam greatly feared the rise of Sunni extremism within Iraq, even more than he feared the rise of his Shia rivals.
For years, Noam Chomsky has noted that many people, particularly Arab leaders, overestimate the power of the CIA, Israel, and the US government. Nixon’s reflections jive with Chomksy’s analyses: “When discussing U.S.-Iraqi relations,, Saddam would often circle back to what he saw as a Zionist conspiracy and Jewish control of US. institutions, particularly Congress and the news media” (142).
For Nixon, his colleagues and the broader US intelligence community, this was uncharted territory: “Aside from the questioning of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in 1989, U.S. government officials had not detained an questioned a former head of state since the end of World war II, when the U.S. interrogated Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s chosen successor in the final days of the Third Reich” (146).
After his days in Iraq, John Nixon “devoted himself to a subject considered one of the most important to the White House in 2006: Muqtada al-Sadr” (162). Nixon goes on to note that he was “struck by the condescending and derisive way the U.S. intelligence community viewed Sadr” (163). Nixon’s interactions with then President George W. Bush weren’t much better. Bush often joked about finding chemical weapons in Iraq (168).
After explaining the complexities and dangers of Muqtada al-Sadr, Nixon reflects that, “Bush then told me that Sadr was a punk and a thug and someone the United States didn’t have to deal with anymore. [Nixon] responded that Sadr represented the views of a large number of Iraqis and could move big crowds when he wanted to” (178). Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice didn’t help the situation, as they simply regurgitated what the executive branch wanted to hear.
The Bush administration didn’t want to deal with realities that didn’t fit within their very specific worldview. As Nixon reflects, “It is sad enough to think how much of taxpayer money gets wasted by the intelligence community, but t’s even sadder when he president dismisses all this expensive work when it doesn’t support his political views” (185).
They day-to-day challenge of disseminating classified information was quite a task. Nixon writes:
Under the service approach, the CIA disseminated up-to-the-minute intelligence to the policy world, This is the crack cocaine for consumers of classified information. It was presented in pithy one-page memos that went downtown every morning and described the latest developments in hot spots of interest. The analyses were by nature tactical and not terribly deep, but they scratch the itch of the policymakers who wanted to know the latest blips on any given subject. It enabled the bus policy maker to appear smart and current without doing a lot of reading or even giving an issue much thought (189).
According to Nix0n, the Bush administration didn’t understand much about Iraq, or its leader: “This was another profound misreading of the Iraqi leader. Saddam was immensely proud of his roots, had traveled abroad only twice, and almost certainly would never leave Iraq—for any reason. Iraq was more than his country; it was his entire identity” (204).
Nixon assumed Cheney and Rumsfeld would’ve taken a more serious and nuanced approach to the war in Iraq, but the opposite was true: Rumsfeld and Cheney dug-in, and regurgitated the insanity and nonsense of the Bush administration, which further delegitimized the aura surrounding Bush and Cheney.
Interestingly, Nixon writes that the Obama administration wasn’t particularly interested in the war in Iraq, let alone how such a war would eventually end. In the end, unfortunately, the Obama administration didn’t operate fundamentally different than the Bush administration. It’s not surprising that the “most dignified person in the room” of Saddam’s execution was, of course, Saddam (232).
The US was wrong. The CIA was wrong. The American government was wrong. Not only is the CIA and the FBI inadequate and superficial, in many ways, those institutions are also inherently restrictive and oppressive in nature.
That being said, Nixon’s book is useful, yet wholly inadequate. Nixon provides no serious discussion or debate about US foreign policy, let alone the ideological foundations upon which such assumptions are based.
The war in Iraq was a complete failure, a blunder, a farce. I’m sorry I ever participated in such madness, yet I remain confident that such blunders will add to the ongoing understanding of the Middle East. The US remains confident, but that confidence is broke by the ongoing assault on US exceptionalism and nationalism.
In the end, there is no ultimate authority. The US government made mistakes. So did Saddam. The story never ends. How could it?
It’s clear that the majority of those who interrogated Saddam had political and ideological goals, yet most of us simply wanted to bring an international criminal to task. The longer the ideological/sectarian debate continues, the more the people lose.
While Nixon provides many indispensable accounts of his time in Iraq and his interrogation of Saddam Hussein, the fact remains: the US, today, is more insecure and scared than any time in recent memory. This, without question, must be challenged and change if we hope to live in a different society.
Vincent Emanuele is an activist and writer. He can be reached at [email protected]
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