Do you agree? I mean, did it have that dramatic an impact that kind of the DNA flipped that day and in the intervening, uh, weeks and months and years?

years?Well, yes, I think it unfolded in stages.

As you say, the initial feeling in the country, and especially in New York and Washington where I was spending my time, was, was sort of disorientation.

I remember driving into the city that morning and thinking, as, you know, someone like you who's covered a lot of wars, that the experience of being under fire was not new to me.

But I realized [laughs] for almost everyone around me, this had never happened before.

And it was, um, also disorienting that it wasn't a state that had at- attacked us after a long period of tension and declared war.

Um, the president was informed by the afternoon that day of 9/11 by the CIA that they were 100% sure it was Al-Qaeda because they had obtained, uh, manifests of the hijacked aircraft and had identified a couple of people they'd been following.

From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

But w- do we know what effect that has on Osama bin Laden?

Throughout his life, he never really denounced his brothers.

Um, he blamed the Saudi royal family for putting them in an impossible position.

They were doing what the Saudi royal family required them to do.

He didn't make it personal in any of his public statements or any of the private statements that I was able to come across.

I don't think he was a great pal of Bakr's.

He, he thought he would be d- he, he would do a better job, but family first for the bin Ladens, like a lot of other Saudis, and he wasn't going to expose-- he wasn't gonna fall into the trap of having the Saudi royal family split him from his brothers.

Uh, what is he hoping is gonna happen when he reaches Afghanistan?

Is that how he lost his eye as well? I mean, at what point does he lose his eye?

It was in an, an accident, a construction site accident.

Um, he did, at least for a couple of years, um, work at the margins.

And while he did find, um, relatives, uh, who, who he could connect with, who would keep track of him, it took, uh, several years before he was, uh, taught how to participate in the building booms that, um, were beginning, um, as more global travel brought more visitors.

Now, this is pre-Great Depression.

And I think at that point, he started to, uh, see himself as a potential young, uh, businessman and, and started to move from brick laying into contracting more broadly and set up a little firm with his brother and, and started to, to at least support himself.

He was far from, from wealthy in, in those first years.

He's risen right up the ranks at this point.

Could you talk a little bit about, about that shift in terms of how the CIA goes from passing intelligence to Saddam in the 1980s to unsuccessfully trying to overthrow him in the 1990s and the 2000s?

Yes.

I mean, it originates in the Gulf War.

Um, the CIA had, had succeeded in the 1980s in, in carrying out what the White House asked them to do and in getting the result that US policymakers wanted, and which was in, arguably in US interest and Iraqi interest in, in some perverse way, given the malign effect that Iranian, uh, influence has in the country today.

But when Saddam invaded Kuwait, of course, we all remember George H.W. Bush organized a global coalition of forty countries to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restore the emirate's royal family.

However, George H.W. Bush did not believe that it made sense to drive on to Baghdad and seek Saddam's overthrow, despite the outrageousness of his conduct in invading and occupying Kuwait.

And in, uh, the aftermath of the war, having achieved the objective of expelling Iraq from Kuwait, but still having Saddam sitting in Baghdad, in May, uh, of that year, so not long after the war's end, George H.W. Bush, who was a former CIA director, signed, uh, the finding necessary to, uh, create a covert action program to facilitate con...

And I think what this discussion is doing is it's, it's easing us into sort of the final section of the title of the book, right? "Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq." And what I'd love to hear you discuss is how you sort of piece together some of these broader lessons, because I think a central thesis of the book is answering the question of: Why would Saddam Hussein ultimately put his regime at risk in the eyes of the Americans over a weapons of mass destruction program that didn't exist, but which the Americans believed existed and which was a, which was another piece of the drive towards the invasion? And I'm curious, just at, at a high level, what did you learn? Why, why would Saddam Hussein carry out this, this strategy of, of deception and, and, uh, disruption of, of the inspections and whatnot when he knew that it, that it could ultimately just build additional opposition to him in the international community?

What do you mean by that? What is the aim here, and, and I take it you think that credible means are not available?

Yeah, well, let's start with the question, what are those aims? It's not clear.

Israel has acted preemptively to stop Iran from breaking out and building a weapon at an unacceptable, uh, pace, and that was the first, and remains, an important part of Israel's explanation for why it had to attack.

At the same time, uh, Prime Minister Netanyahu has talked about regime change, has called upon the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, a call that echoes, uh, one that George H.W. Bush made in early 1991 when he called on the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and that didn't end well because the aim of fomenting an internal rebellion was not matched by any ability of the United States to support the rebels.

Here too, no one is expecting the United States or Israel to launch a ground invasion of Iran and topple its governments, and yet there's talk, loose talk, about regime change as the goal of the entire operation.

Do you think that principle is relevant here?

Well, the Iraq War, after all, was a ground invasion, so once, uh, American forces reached Baghdad and chased Saddam Hussein out of his palace, they were the occupying power and they owned the country, and we all, uh, remember the unhappy result that unfolded, I think.

Um, the analogy here is probably closer to the intervention in Libya because that was just a bombing campaign.