(ANTIMEDIA) After coalition forces captured Saddam Hussein in December

2003, John Nixon, a senior leadership analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) from 1998 to 2011, interrogated the former Iraqi dictator. The detailed account
of this interrogation is now available to the public in the form of a book, Debriefing the
President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.
In the publication, Nixon explains that Hussein was out of touch with the military reality
of his own country in his final years. When I interrogated Saddam,
Nixon told Time magazine, he told me: You are going to fail. You are going to find that
it is not so easy to govern Iraq.
As Nixon pressed Saddam to explain why, the captured dictator said Americans would
soon learn they are going to fail in Iraq because [Americans] do not know the
language, the history, and [they] do not understand the Arab mind. To the former CIA
agent, Saddams warning had a point.
In order to maintain Iraqs multi-ethnic state, Nixon told reporters, the presence of a
strongman like Saddam in Iraq was necessary. He added:
Saddams leadership style and penchant for brutality were among the many faults of
his regime, but he could be ruthlessly decisive when he felt his power base was
threatened, and it is far from certain that his regime would have been overthrown by a
movement of popular discontent.
Reflecting on what he learned, Nixon told Time it was unlikely that a group like ISIS
would have been able to enjoy the kind of success under his repressive regime that
they have had under the Shia-led Baghdad government. He made the case against
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which led to Saddams ultimate fall.
According to Nixon, Saddam added that before his ascension to power, there was only
bickering and arguing [in Iraq]. I ended all that and made people agree! Nixon
eventually found he had developed a grudging respect for how [Saddam] was able to
maintain the Iraqi nation as a whole for as long as he did, despite the CIA officers lack
of sympathy for the fallen dictator.
To Nixon, Saddam Hussein was certainly a brutal dictator, but he wasnt on a mission
to blow up the world, as George W. Bushs administration had claimed to justify the
invasion.
While many may argue Nixons explanation is rather simplistic, it undoubtedly reveals
that theres much more to the stories of how the U.S. government justifies invasions and
military involvement abroad than meets the eye. In the specific case of Iraq, anti-
intervention activists have been on record for years saying the invasion created a
power vacuum, making the rise of ISIS more likely to occur.
As countless Iraq war enablers and supporters in the United States continue to defend
their actions and claimSaddam had the will and the means to threaten the world, how
this war came to be reality is still often ignored. As the former CIA agent Nixon
publishes Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, Americans
are witnessing a fight between competing narratives as they shape the news the
country consumes. These narratives could even impact our foreign and domestic
policies. And even now, as we hear yet another account of an insider claiming the
U.S. invasion of Iraq was unjustified and damaging, its incredible to see much of the
media still ignoring what non-interventionists have been saying all along.