George Tenet’s Saddam: A blowhard bluffing

Go figure, Tenet says of Saddam that “the irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing.” How ironic that nobody thought this blowhard dictator might bluff.

Remember those videos of Saddam Hussein brandishing an assault rifle (link) exhorting the cheering throngs of Iraqis into an anti-American frenzy. Then there was the time in 2001 that he actually fired off a couple of rifle rounds for the camera (link) to celebrate Iraq’s Grand Day of Quds.

Do you suppose a guy who enjoys waving a semi-automatic pistol around (link) might pretend he has a cache of nuclear bombs?

Here’s a picture you may have missed, showing Saddam with a giant sword (link). You don’t have to be a Freudian to draw conclusions from this one.

Here’s a collection of photos of gun totting Saddam (link).

Do you really have to be an expert on analyzing the personality of the authoritarian Arab mind to figure out that such a person might be bluffing when he claims he has the biggest bombs on the block?

Here’s what Maureen Dowd wrote in her May 2nd New York Times OpEd about “slam dunk” George Tenet, Slam for short:

“The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing,” Slam said of Saddam on “Larry King Live” on Monday night, adding, “And he didn’t know we weren’t.”

Mr. He-Man Tenet didn’t understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East?

Slam couldn’t take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?

Aside from the fact that the best poker players bluff with quiet confidence, and Saddam’s bluffing was all bluster, Maureen is right on saying that somebody should have figured out that a man who got off on carrying a sidearm on his hip and waving an assault rifle around might just be bluffing about having weapons of mass destruction.