Saddam should have been left to run Iraq: CIA officer who interrogated him

Both President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump believe the United States never should have invaded Iraq in 2003 (or, at least, Trump claims he now does). 

The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath in many ways prefigure the present moment in the Middle East; it triggered a sectarian unraveling that now haunts both Iraq and Syria and looms large in the minds of an Obama administration wary of further intervention in the region’s conflicts.

In a new book coming out this month, John Nixon, a former CIA officer who interrogated Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after he was captured by coalition forces in December 2003, details his encounter with the toppled despot and the varied discussions that followed. 

Early on, Hussein warned that the occupation of Iraq wouldn’t be as much of a “cakewalk” as Washington’s neoconservatives assumed at the time. From an excerpt published on Time magazine’s website:

“When I interrogated Saddam, he told me: ‘You are going to fail. You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.’”