AP reports that Hussein and his inner circle were exasperated in their attempts during the 1990s to prove to the world that they’d given up banned weapons, according to transcripts of meetings found among documents seized after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “We don’t have anything hidden!” Saddam once interjected, according to a transcript.


AP

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Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they’d given up banned weapons.

“We don’t have anything hidden!” the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show.

At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would “roam Iraq for 50 years” in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. “When is this going to end?” he asked.

It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction long ago, a finding that discredited the Bush administration’s stated rationale for invading Iraq in 2003 — to locate WMD.

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