Dans un article paru le 12 mars intitulé "Even as U.S. Invaded, Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat", et tiré de la déclassification progressive de documents récoltés en Irak, on peut apprendre, entre autre, que les principaux généraux de Saddam Hussein pensaient détenir des armes de destruction massive :

The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.

La stratégie de Saddam Hussein fut de convaincre sa population, les cadres du parti, mais aussi ses voisins, en particulier l'Iran, et les Etats-Unis, que l'Irak détenait des armes bactériologiques et chimiques, tout en nettoyant le terrain devant les inspecteurs. Une stratégie qui s'est retournée contre lui. Pourtant en 2003 Saddam Hussein ne pouvait prétendre ignorer que les Etats-Unis n'hésiteraient pas à passer à l'acte. En 1991 déjà, il avait commis cette erreur.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.

Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt".

That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons. The very steps the Iraqi government was taking to reduce the prospect of war were used against it, increasing the odds of a military confrontation.

Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all.

Bien sûr la C.I.A. s'est laissée berner, mais il ressort clairement de ces documents que les théories du complot fondées sur un mensonge volontaire du président Bush et de son administration masquant des motifs inavouables sont sans fondement. Il reste toutefois à établir que la Syrie n'est pas impliquée dans un camouflage d'armes irakiennes.