Saddam Hussein's Deception Revealed Through FBI

So, does this mean that "Saddam Lied, People Died?"

I remember an intel officer telling me about this as an excerpt from the 9/11 report. In essence, it's old news to people "in the know" but a revelation for armchair warriors America wide. But essentially the 9/11 report outlined how Saddam had lied to his own military so that they would perpetuate the belief (because they believed it) that WMD existed so that intel moles from Iran would believe it too. He feared Iran more than the US because (as we've proven) our general population can't stomach hard reality. The reason we had such mass surrenders by entire Iraqi divisions was that WMD was the crux of their defense plan ... when the generals turned to Saddam asking for the weapons (to use against us) he told them for the first time they didn't exist. Hence, now defenseless, the generals surrendered their divisions rather than have them all killed by the Americans. So like I said, old news in a way ... just coming out from a different source now.

The book Cobra II also corroborates this, in that they had intel from a lot of other Iraqi sources. These sources said that the whole reason that Saddam kept up the facade of possessing WMD was that they did not view the US as a threat and did not think we would do anything against them. On the other hand, Saddam was much more afraid of his own generals (a coup if he appeared weak or giving in to the US), and especially of Iran. Saddam perceived that chem and bio weapons were all that saved their cookies during the Iran-Iraq war. He was much more concerned about them than he was of us.

As for resuming his programs once the UN inspections were over, that's certainly plausible and physically very possible even if someone were to deny it were true, since it's pretty hard to prove intent. Most bio weapons programs are comprised of elements that have wholly legitimate scientific research or defensive bio warfare uses, so it's very hard to kill a program if they want to do a kabuki dance with you. Unless you catch them filling aerosolized anthrax into artillery shells, they can always claim that they were developing defenses against it. Much the same with chemical weapons. Many of them involve dual use technologies and chemicals. Here is a great article on the bio-warfare side of things from Gregory Koblentz Pathogens as Weapons: The International Security Implications of Biological Warfare from the journal International Security.