The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 0 2004, it was clear Saddam had anticipated that, once he re- turned to more normal relations with the rest of the world, he would be able to rebuild his arsenal, including WMD. But before the war, the picture was complicated and nu- anced. We had no analogue in Washington for Saddam’s thinking or the internal operations of his regime. For U.S. politicians, ignorant of the Baghdad mindset, it was impos- sible to have anything more than a cartoon image of Sad- dam Hussein. Even many intelligence analysts found it difficult to fathom Baghdad, given the few opportunities to interact with Iraqis inside Iraq. As an intelligence analyst, how can you see or collect data about something for which you have no word or concept? Likewise, Saddamhad vast misperceptions about Wash- ington. Among them, he and his government assumed that the last superpower must be well-informed. Baghdad made critical decisions in 1998 concerning inspectors under the assumption that the United States knew Iraq had elim- inated its WMD systems. Operating in the Dark The combative interactions between U.N. weapons inspectors and Iraqi officials throughout the 1990s largely established the mindsets and biases that led to misappre- hensions and miscalculations on both sides in 2000-2003. Once Baghdad was rid of all international inspectors in 1998, Washington lost virtually all knowledge of what was going on inside Iraq. The relatively detailed data UN- SCOM had generated suddenly vanished, leaving the U.S. with no independent sources. Our intelligence analysts nonetheless were obliged to make their best guesses about Iraq’s WMD program. Based on previous experience with Saddam’s behavior and their caution about underestimating his military might (as the West did prior to the 1991 war), there was an altogether natural tendency to presume Baghdad would reconstitute WMD in the absence of any inspec- tors — and be able to conceal such efforts under the cover of the renewed trade between Iraq and the out- side world that was flourishing under the U.N. Oil-for- F O C U S