Gordon Carrera

It's a kind of test for him to show whether he's going to be able to cooperate.

But the expectation is that he'll fail.

And then that will build support.

The hawks in Washington, as you said, Dick Cheney and the like, see these inspections as a mistake.

They're going to divert the US away from the war they just want to get on with.

And the idea is that then when Saddam frustrates the inspectors or they find something, then there'll potentially be a new UN resolution authorizing action against Saddam, which everyone can get behind and everything's going to be fine.

That's the idea.

Spoiler alert, it's not going to work out that way.

How do you come clean to something you don't have?

And so I think it's worth going back to Saddam, isn't it?

Because I think that's what's so interesting is Saddam as a character in this story because...

As we get to the end of 2002, Saddam is going to decide, well, I'm going to let the inspectors back in.

He's been told by France and Russia that, you know, that's what he should do.

And he kind of listens to them.

And then again, we get one of these meetings.

I love these meetings of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, you know, where he gathers all his top aides.

And this one is a corker because this one, he gathers his top aides and he says, guys, there is no WMD.

Yeah.

And it sounds like some of his generals are actually stunned by this because they'd always thought, well, he's, you know, I don't know about the WMD, but someone else, you know, he's definitely got some hidden somewhere.

And so it's this kind of weird thing where he's now telling his generals like, yeah, we got nothing.