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Saddam Hussein’s final secrets: CIA vault tapes show Iraqi strongman wanted to be a novelist

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March 2, 2024

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In the pantheon of bloodthirsty dictators, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein has almost been relegated to the dustbin of history.

He’s remembered as part of the now-quaint-seeming “axis of evil,” for having psychopathic sons, Uday and Qusay, and a murderous cousin named “Chemical Ali,” and perhaps most of all for not having weapons of mass destruction.

The March 2003 invasion of Iraq was premised on the claim that Saddam had amassed chemical and biological weapons and was ready to use them.

But there were none and the cavalry charge to Baghdad turned into a decade-long morass that cost more than $728 billion and led to the death of 4,492 US servicemembers.

Now his final secrets are being revealed in a new book based in part on Saddam’s secret tapes which its author fought a legal battle to get.

“The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq,” by Steve Coll, uses details of what Saddam told CIA and FBI interrogators over cigars and the own Nixon-style recordings he made during his 24-year reign, which the CIA retrieved from his ruined palaces in Baghdad.

They reveal the Saddam nobody knew and show how just how much the CIA misunderstood the butcher of Baghdad.

Read more at

#saddamhussein #cia

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Saddam Hussein’s final secretsSaddam HusseinChemical AliThe MarchAmericas InvasionSteve CollBaghdad TheyBaghdad Read

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Saddam Hussein’s final secrets: CIA vault tapes show Iraqi strongman wanted to be a novelist · New York Post · Sentinel