During the interrogations, Mr Nixon asked Hussein if he’d ever thought of engaging in a pre-emptive strike with WMDs against US troops based in Saudi Arabia.
According to Mr Nixon, writing in the Mail on Sunday, the former dictator’s reply was: “We never thought about using weapons of mass destruction. It was not discussed. Use chemical weapons against the world? Is there anyone with full faculties who would do this? Who would use these weapons when they had not been used against us?”
.. Hussein then said America had made such a grave misjudgement because “the spirit of listening and understanding was not there” and some of the blame for this lay with himself.The faulty intelligence surrounding WMDs wasn’t the only mistake the Americans made about Iraq.
According to Mr Nixon, Hussein warned him against the nation building the American government was attempting in the country.
“You are going to fail,” Hussein told him. “You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.”