What was Saddam thinking?

There remains quite a bit of furor over the U.S. government's decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The fact that weapons of mass destruction were never found is shouted by Bush detractors as clear evidence that the administration lied to the American public in order to pursue an agenda that was in the interest of a few "Neocons." The fact that Saddam himself played a crucial role in the course of events is simply ignored by those that want to impugn the Bush administration.

No one asks what the heck Saddam was thinking. Of course, it is probably rather difficult to put oneself in the shoes of a brutal dictator who was once an ally of the United States, and who thumbed his nose at United Nations sanctions and certainly played games with the International Atomic Energy Commission. Now, if I was a Stalinist dictator who ruled a country with an iron fist, who's will and capability to kill was sufficient to keep a fractious population under control, and field one of the largest armies in the middle east, I might in fact be egotistical enough to believe that what was going on was American saber rattling at the time. A lot of Americans thought that at the time as I recall as well.

Now this may have been an Alpha Male sort of dominance thing too, on a personal and nationalistic level. Saddam was certainly an alpha male, and he may have just had a psychological inability to believe that he would be deposed by Amerfican forces. Sure, he was kicked out of Kuwait, and really, that was a bigger act of aggression than playing games with the UN over WMD.

Thing is, the U.S. was clearly NOT bluffing. Troop movements weren't a secret, and the U.S. putting that much firepower on the border was unlike any other "gamesmanship" or "saber rattling" that they had performed in the past. 9-11 also changed the context of such deployments. Thinking that the U.S. was bluffing was simply a very high risk bet. If Saddam had backed down, he would still have had his country (pretty much like Kaddaffi). But he didn't.

As much as people want to ascribe sinister motives to the war, nobody talks about Saddam's role in the play. Maybe we'll get a better idea if/when he is tried. But really, I'm just not clear on just what Saddam was thinking.

Of course, I might never get it either. Saddam was a cutthroat dictator in the mold of Stalin. Still, I would like to know. Guess I'm just an enquiring mind.