Saddam's WMD Bluff was Aimed at Iran

Ah now we see some method to this man's madness.

The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD.

"In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq," according to the documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute.

This makes sense since they fought a massive, bloody, 8 year war against one another. The messed up part from Saddams perspective was that his government was overthrown because the US called his bluff. If he let the inspectors in he would still be in power, no doubt about it.

The good thing is we might actually get a somewhat decent democracy out of Iraq instead of your standard Middle East kleptocracy. Also the doctrine of Take-then-hold-then-build as a way to stop insurgents may be a long term benefit of the 6 years of chaos that led up until now.

Also the idea of bonding with the people and working together (instead of retreating to bases outside of the civilian areas) could be our military MO from here on in. The Iraq war has taught our military how to fight insurgent uprising that might translate to big gains going forward.

I can easily see if, for instance, Obama sent the Marines into Darfur how we would crush the insurgents with overwhelming force then build up the areas that we hold after we are done. Then when we left Sudan we would leave behind a stable and hopefully prosperous country in our wake.