Remaking Iraq is necessary after being lied into war.

When playing chicken doesn’t work

In March 2003, the United States, with a little help from its friends, invaded Iraq (again) and finished what it should have finished in 1991. Now, on the 20th anniversary of that invasion, there are a number of rumpled-shirt press types who are looking back at that war, declaring it wrong from the beginning. A disaster. A catastrophe. And for those American families who lost loved ones there, who could dispute that?

But there is a lot of revisionism, too. That is, blaming neocons and especially George W. Bush for “lying us into war,” as so many put it. The record needs to be made straight. (For much help in that, see Bret Stephens on this page Friday.)

It is clear now, in March 2023, that Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have all those weapons of mass destruction that every responsible intelligence agency/senator/future president suspected he had in March 2003. And they had good reason to suspect, in fact the best: Because he had used them before. And refused to allow inspectors to do their jobs.

Lest we forget, a president named Bill Clinton once told an audience during the time when Saddam Hussein was playing games: Some of those “presidential palaces” that he refused to allow inspectors into were as large as Washington, D.C.

Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons during the Iraq-Iran war, and against Kurdish civilians— technically, his fellow countrymen. Does anybody remember Ali Hassan al-Majid? Probably not. But you probably remember Saddam’s henchman’s nickname: Chemical Ali.

Who in the West, or in the East for that matter, could have known that Saddam had managed to dispose of his chemical weapons? After all, on the eve of the 2003 coalition invasion, his generals had to be informed that they wouldn’t be able to use those fabled stocks of mustard gas, sarin or VX on the Americans. Imagine their surprise when Saddam came forth with the truth, at last.

The Iraqi strongman would have lied to his own. He lived in a tough neighborhood. And it wouldn’t have made him any stronger if the Iranians had found out he didn’t have what he allowed the world to assume.

Imagine the surprise of all those oh-so-knowledgeable intel types inside—and outside—the George W. Bush administration. Imagine the surprise of all those pols in Washington—Republican and Democrat— who for years had pounded the table demanding a regime change in Iraq.

Imagine the surprise, and relief, of all those allied troops who drove into Baghdad without once hearing the ominous cry GAS! GAS! GAS! (And here many of them had just trudged across the desert wearing all that heavy MOPP gear.)

The folks who criticize George W. Bush for “lying us into war” would make a mistaken judgment the equivalent of a deliberate falsehood for their political purposes. They keep a short list when it comes to those who were wrong about the extent of Saddam’s arsenal.

Oh, Dick Cheney may make it now and then, along with Colin Powell or Condi Rice. But not all those pols in their own party who for the longest decried Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

Because it was responsible to assume it.

We remember the name George Piro from all those years ago. CBS News got the scoop on him in 2008, and we recall writing about him.

Mr. Piro was an FBI agent who spoke Arabic and was Saddam Hussein’s interrogator once the dictator was pulled out of that infamous spider hole and brought to the Americans, dirty and tired.

Mr. Piro spent seven months winning Saddam’s confidence, bringing him writing materials and toiletries, and somehow getting Saddam Hussein to think he, Mr. Piro, had President Bush’s ear. Nobody said you had to be perfectly honest to be an interrogator. Just effective.

Mr. Piro told CBS there was a good reason Saddam Hussein didn’t come clean with the world about his weapons programs, or lack thereof. The Iraqi dictator needed the world to think he still had them. The threat of WMDs kept his enemies at bay. Or at least he thought it would.

Here’s some of what George Piro told CBS News:

—“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. He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.”

Saddam was playing chicken. But after Sept. 11, 2001, he was playing with a president who wasn’t having it. More from Mr. Piro and CBS: —Saddam would not admit to being free of WMDs because he needed the world to think he still had them. He needed to bluff to keep his enemies from attacking, and those enemies included more nations than just the United States: “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [claiming to have WMDs] would prevent the Iranians from re-invading Iraq.”

—Besides, Saddam Hussein intended to start up his WMD programs as soon as the heat was off. His people already knew how to make them, and use them. Saddam “still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there. He wanted to pursue all of WMD … to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” Including nukes, Mr. Piro says.

All this may not be exactly straight from the horse’s mouth, but it’s from the mouth of the guy who interrogated the horse.

After it became clear that post-invasion Iraq didn’t have WMDs, some of us wished the Bush the Second administration had somebody better on the intelligence payroll, somebody clairvoyant. But when Saddam Hussein was still in Baghdad, bluffing and posing a threat to the region and whole world, after 9/11 but enough years removed that the Americans gave him every opportunity to cooperate, what would have been the responsible move for a non-clairvoyant administration? And a responsible world?

After the invasion, and after discovering no WMD, the question became not how to go back in time, but how to remake Iraq. It’s still not easy all these years later. But the alternatives—to leave that country and the Middle East in turmoil, or to the tender mercies of the kind of fanatics who made Cambodia a killing field after the American rout in Vietnam— were neither realistic nor honorable.

Two decades removed, we can safely say that America was lied into war.

But the liar who pulled us into it was named Saddam Hussein.