Saddam's Management Style

The story from ABC News on the Saddam tapes will and should get a lot of attention.

Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard cautiously puts it in perspective.

He raises the question of whether Saddam thought he had weapons of mass destruction because he was duped by his own scientists.

I find that to be less than likely in a regime in which opponents are fed into paper shredders. Saddam patterned his regime and his career after Joseph Stalin's. Stalin had a multilayered intelligence/secret police system and a keen knowledge of the bureaucracy, having once been the personnel director of the Communist Party. Saddam too was a detail man.

Stalin's support among his associates was based upon fear whereas Hitler's stemmed from charisma. As a result, Hitler's associates had far greater ability to hide things from him than did Stalin's because Hitler had fewer internal controls. The German dictator was often enormously detached whereas Stalin's - and Saddam's - associates could never know when "The Boss" might show up and ask questions.

It is far more likely that weapons were hidden in Syria than it is that the scientists decided to deceive Saddam about their existence.