Old news but I didn’t understand it when it first broke in November and I still don’t. So let’s try again. Says 60 Minutes:

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…

“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…

Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells Pelley. He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

So, because he so feared an Iranian invasion, he decided to keep mum about his meager weapons stockpile and hope that Bush would beg off after a week or two of sorties over Baghdad. Did he … not follow American media at the time? It was transparently clear that the goal was to dislodge him and that hundreds of thousands of troops were on their way to that end. I can understand the initial calculus of worrying more about Iran, but once you know that America’s coming, the calculus changes and you do and say whatever you can to prevent it. An imminent U.S. invasion is a sure loss; a hypothetical Iranian invasion, less so. Beyond that, though, didn’t Iran have enough of a below-radar presence even in Saddam-era police-state Iraq to know whether he had a WMD program or not? He was their archenemy, had invaded once before, and was notorious for his nuclear aspirations. It was of urgent concern for them to know. Surely there were some Shiites connected to SCIRI or the Sadr family inside Iraq willing to risk death to find out. I understand why Iran wouldn’t share that info with the U.S. if they did know — why stop Bush from slaying the dragon next door? — but I’ve always assumed that they did. And Saddam, being the paranoid type and no fool, presumably would have assumed the same. In which case, why not just come clean? Especially since everyone knew for a fact at the time that Iran was working on its own nuclear, ahem, “energy” program with which it would doubtless attempt to intimidate Baghdad in the future. What am I missing?

Update: I’m not so sure I agree with Robert Bidinotto about this. Not being a member of the nutroots I don’t believe BUSH LIED!, but it doesn’t follow that just because Saddam lied Bush didn’t. It could, theoretically, have been the case that BUSH KNEW! Saddam was lying and kept that secret.