Questioning the allegations re assassination attempt: the ISG's 960-page report, known as the Duelfer Report, does not address the assassination attempt, its chronology and depiction of Saddam's world view - adduced through lengthy interviews by one Arabic-speaking FBI investigator and other interviews of Saddam's closest advisers - make the notion that the Iraqi dictator tried to kill Bush all the more implausible.
For one thing, Saddam, according to the report, was convinced that the CIA had thoroughly penetrated his regime and thus would know not only that he had dismantled his WMD (which the CIA apparently did not), but also would know about his plans for important intelligence operations. Under those circumstances, it is hard to understand why he would then order an assassination attempt on the former US president.
Even more interesting, according to the report, was Saddam's "complicated" view of the United States. While he derived "prestige" from being an enemy of the US, he also considered it to be "equally prestigious for him to be an ally of the United States - and regular entreaties were made during the last decade to explore this alternative".
Indeed, beginning already in 1991, according to the report, "very senior Iraqis close to the president made proposals through intermediaries for dialogue with Washington".
"Baghdad offered flexibility on many issues, including offers to assist in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Moreover, in informal discussions, senior officials allowed that, if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programs and/or ambitions," it added.
The report even concluded that Iraq was willing to be Washington's "best friend in the region bar none".
The fact that the US, under Bush Sr and Clinton, did not show interest was apparently a source of bewilderment to the Iraqi leader, according to the Duelfer report. If Saddam had tried to kill the ex-president, he probably would not have been bewildered by Washington's lack of interest, but, by all accounts, he was.
"From the report, Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination," noted Gregory Thielmann, a former senior State Department analyst who specialized in Iraq's WMD programs. "If his top priority was getting the [UN economic] sanctions lifted [as indicated by the report], then it doesn't follow that he would try to kill the president of the United States."
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