Assassinate Saddam? | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010

Wednesday, October 2, 2002 at 10:00 AM EDT

Assassinate Saddam?

It’s been a wild couple of days on the Iraq war front. First, President Bush appeared to soften his determination for regime change in response to U.N. resistance. His spokesman Ari Fleischer said that the administration encourages a coup, or maybe assassination: The cost of one bullet would be less than war.

But just this morning, Bush was arm-in-arm with Congressional leaders, and beating the war drum again. Is is possible that all the months of build up to war are in fact a giant game of chicken? Threatening imminent war and regime change to incite someone, anyone, within Saddam Hussein’s inner circle to kill the Iraqi leader?

Tonight, we talk with the man who lead covert CIA operations in the 1990s to overthrow Saddam. Is the US playing chicken or seriously reading for war on Iraq?

Guests:

Robert Baer, author of “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism,” and a case officer in the Directorate of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, from 1976 to 1997

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