In Wednesday's New York Times (10/26/11), Michael Gordon wrote a piece headlined "Papers From Iraqi Archive Reveal Conspiratorial Mind-Set of Hussein," about some Iraqi archives that give an inside-the-bubble picture of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Not surprisingly, Hussein comes off as paranoid, incompetent and so on.  Gordon begins the story noting that Hussein was troubled by the Iran/Contra story, interpreting the U.S. deal with his Iranian enemies as some sort of "conspiracy against Iraq."

Gordon calmly explains, free of a conspiratorial mind-set, that Iran/Contra was just an operation "to open a private channel to the new leadership in Tehran and to generate secret profits that could be sent to Nicaraguan rebels. " You know, the way any superpower funnels support to a terrorist group. No big deal.

Gordon explains later that the Iraqis

could not understand why the Reagan administration had taken military action against Libya in 1986 but was reaching out to Iran, since, Mr. Hussein said, Iran "plays a greater role in terrorism."

"I am trying to understand exactly what happened here," he said.

Hussein saw such conspiracies everywhere:

But Mr. Hussein would not be moved from his conspiratorial view. He mentioned the arms sales again in his fateful meeting on July 25, 1990, with April Glaspie, the American ambassador in Baghdad, when he again misread Washington and assumed it would stand aside when his army invaded Kuwait a week later.

The Glaspie meeting with Hussein has been pretty well-known for years. As FAIR pointed out in 1991, Glaspie's apparent message to Hussein was that the United States would not actively object to Iraq invading Kuwait.

One of the WikiLeaks cables that was recently released covered that meeting. And from that account, it's not clear that Saddam Hussein misread anything. As Harvard professor Stephen Walt wrote back when the cable was released:

a careful reading of the cable suggests that Saddam could have easily interpreted Glaspie's conversation, along with other statements by U.S. officials, as a sign that the United States was not strongly committed to protecting Kuwait.

After Hussein rattled off his various grievances, what did Glaspie say? From Walt:

Her very first point in response is to thank him for the opportunity to discuss these matters directly, and she then says that "President Bush, too, wants friendship." Her next point is to tell Saddam that "the President had instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq," and she reminds Saddam that though "some circles" might oppose that policy, "the U.S. administration is instructed by the President." And then she adds that "what is important is that the President has very recently reaffirmed his desire for a better relationship" and he has shown that desire by opposing some sanctions bills.

The meeting eventually turned to Iraq's escalating crisis with Kuwait:

According to the cable, she asks: "Is it not reasonable for the U.S. to ask, in a spirit of friendship, not confrontation, the simple question: What are your intentions?"

Saddam says it is a reasonable question, and he acknowledges that this is even our "duty" as a superpower. But he quickly returns to his list of grievances, and says he's tried everything to resolve his problem with Kuwait.  He subsequently leaves the room to take a phone call, and returns with the encouraging news (from Egyptian President Mubarak), that the Kuwaitis have agreed to further negotiations.  The meeting then ends on a friendly note, but when Saddam raises the question of his border dispute with Kuwait, Glaspie responds that "she had served in Kuwait 20 years before; then as now, we took no position on these Arab affairs."

The conspiracy-minded Hussein could also have "misread" the Washington Post (7/26/90), which reported right after the Glaspie meeting and six days before Iraq's invasion that administration officials were saying that "an Iraqi attack on Kuwait would not draw a U.S. military response." In Hussein's twisted mind, apparently, that meant that if he attacked Kuwait, the U.S. would not respond militarily.

In a New York Times science article (3/29/11) about the CIA and Pentagon's psychological profiling of foreign political figures, reporter Benedict Carey adds a note of caution:

Yet the assessments can also be misleading, even embarrassing. Profiles of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that circulated in the early 1990s suggested that he was ultimately a pragmatist who would give in under pressure.

Carey gives no explanation for why such an assessment would be misleading or embarrassing--as if it went without saying that this was a misreading of the Iraqi dictator. In fact, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Hussein made repeated offers to negotiate a withdrawal--offers that were rejected by the elder Bush administration, and all but ignored by corporate media (Extra!, 11-12/90--see "Writing Off Negotiations").

Hussein also destroyed his chemical and biological weapon stocks under pressure from the U.N.; when the younger Bush insisted that U.N. inspectors be allowed to verify his lack of unconventional weapons, Hussein let them in--and Bush invaded anyway. Though the U.N. inspection teams were a major story in the months before the Iraq War began, corporate media sometimes seem to forget that they existed (Action Alert, 12/2/08).

Presenting Saddam Hussein as a madman who could never be reasoned with obviously helped the U.S. government justify military action. Why journalists should accept this depiction in the face of the historic record--well, you might need a psychological profile to explain that.

Media blogger Eli Stephens (left i on the news, 7/2/09) has posted on a Washington Post lede claiming that "Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran." Stephens explains how, as "one of the major pieces of 'evidence' used to justify the invasion of Iraq at the time," this "repetition now, from the mouth of Saddam Hussein no less, would be an important post-facto justification for the invasion." There's just one problem:

The claim itself was bullshit at the time. The truth, as I wrote at the time, was that while Gen. Colin Powell was at the U.N. lying through his teeth (or spouting lies put in his mouth by others, if you prefer to be generous to Powell) about the "evidence" the U.S. had, Iraqi Gen. Amer Al-Saadi (still imprisoned, as far as we know) was saying clearly and quite publicly that Iraq had no WMD whatsoever. That's one funny way to "allow the world to believe that you have WMD."

And, guess what? No such statement from Saddam Hussein appears in the interviews, which are all online at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The interviews aren't even transcripts, they are all simply summaries of the conversations made by an FBI agent, with only a tiny amount of direct quotations embedded within them. But even in those summaries, no such claim appears.

Having "twice" read "every word of the five 'casual conversations'" the Post says Hussein's comments are drawn from, Stephens is compelled to "repeat--no such claim by Saddam Hussein appears (nor does it appear in the summary of the documents prepared by the NSA)--that is entirely a fiction created by the Post." Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Saddam's 'Secret': Hussein Told CBS About WMDs--but CBS Wasn't Watching" (3–4/08) by Seth Ackerman.

Chris Matthews reacting Bush's speech (as transcribed by the right-wing Media Research Center):

The idea that we have some brand new neo-conservative ideology of freedom that's going to bring peace over in that part of the world is not true, and he's still selling it, and that's the tragedy of the last eight years.

The very same Chris Matthews, reacting to a Saddam Hussein statue being pulled down in Baghdad (4/9/03):

We're all neo-cons now.