CIA officer who interviewed Saddam Hussein reveals the bizarre way the dictator spent his last days in power

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December 20, 2016 5:32 PM

Former CIA Senior Analyst John Nixon's new book "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein” provides never-before-seen details into the daily life of Iraq's deposed dictator in the months before the 2003 US invasion wrenched him from power.

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Nixon, who wrote his master's thesis on Hussein, and whose full-time job at the CIA was to study him, was shocked to find out that common intelligence on Hussein had been wrong.

From The New York Times review of Nixon's book:

Hussein's own abdication of authority in lieu of his more artistic pursuits did little to make up for his prior brutal actions as the leader of Iraq. However, it did call into question the overall value of removing the dictator from power in the first place.

“Was Saddam worth removing from power?” Nixon asked himself in the book. “I can speak only for myself when I say that the answer must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government.”

Since 2003, the mainstream political consensus in the US has turned on George W. Bush's 2003 decision to invade Iraq, with both major party presidential candidates this election cycle condemning the invasion and ensuing occupation of Iraq.

You can read the full book review here»

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