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Interrogator: Invasion Surprised Saddam (60 Minutes interview)
CBS News (Drudge) ^ | Jan. 24, 2008

Posted on 01/24/2008 12:42:30 PM PST by james500

Saddam Hussein initially didn't think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.

Piro, in his first television interview, relays this and other revelations to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley this Sunday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Piro spent almost seven months debriefing Saddam in a plan based on winning his confidence by convincing him that Piro was an important envoy who answered to President Bush. This and being Saddam's sole provider of items like writing materials and toiletries made the toppled Iraqi president open up to Piro, a Lebanese-American and one of the few FBI agents who spoke Arabic. "He told me he initially miscalculated... President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998...a four-day aerial attack," says Piro. "He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack." "He didn't believe the U.S. would invade?" asks Pelley, "No, not initially," answers Piro.

Once the invasion was certain, says Piro, Saddam asked his generals if they could hold the invaders for two weeks. "And at that point, it would go into what he called the secret war," Piro tells Pelley. But Piro isn’t convinced that the insurgency was Saddam's plan. "Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency," says Piro.

(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 60minutes; bigmistakes; dictators; fbi; georgepiro; interrogation; iraq; piro; saddam; surprise; wmd
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To: theDentist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0bWWwW1SPE


81 posted on 01/24/2008 6:29:20 PM PST by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: ikez78

Thank yo ufor the ping! Exactly. The AP is not to be trusted.


82 posted on 01/24/2008 6:35:00 PM PST by jrooney (Ron Paul called Reagan a Dramatic Failure and thinks he is smarter than Abe Lincoln.)
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To: james500

the bluffing part is really no surprise to me. He was known to do it and did it til the end. But he did have WMDs, and we aren’t talking about nukes.


83 posted on 01/24/2008 7:00:06 PM PST by RDTF
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To: TruthShallSetYouFree

Exactly.


84 posted on 01/24/2008 8:15:24 PM PST by SoCal Pubbie
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To: 1COUNTER-MORTER-68

what does bttt mean?


85 posted on 01/24/2008 9:23:46 PM PST by ikez78 (http://www.regimeofterror.com - Saddam Hussein and terrorism)
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To: BigBobber
We don't want to admit we closed the barn door after the horse ran away.

Hardly. We watched the horse run away. The US and possibly every Western intelligence service monitored the ten-week, Russian-assisted transit of WMDs into Syria. It was hard to miss considering Iraq was the most satellite-reconnoitered spot on earth during the run-up.
86 posted on 01/25/2008 2:57:29 AM PST by Thrownatbirth (.....Iraq Invasion fan since '91.)
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To: ikez78

what does bttt mean?
~~~

Bttt=Bump to the top ,,,

It keeps it at the top of my ping-list so I can find it and

read it,,,

TANKS for the pings...;0)


87 posted on 01/25/2008 4:09:23 PM PST by 1COUNTER-MORTER-68 (THROWING ANOTHER BULLET-RIDDLED TV IN THE PILE OUT BACK~~~~~)
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To: james500

This 60 minutes piece is vindication for many things regarding the war, most importantly that Saddam had every intention to reconstitute the WMD program once France got the UN to lift sanctions.

I’m heading to the lefty sites to blog the hell out of this right now. I’m sure they’ll say the interogator is a Bush lackey but this wont stop me from beating them over the head with it. Oh yeah this is going to be fun! Bush better bring this up in the state of the union.


88 posted on 01/27/2008 6:44:14 PM PST by ParaVet93
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To: Southack
From the “too dumb to run a 3rd world kleptocracy” files, no doubt...

Yes...anyone who trusts the USA government is an idiot.

89 posted on 02/01/2008 12:40:01 AM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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