One thing common to successful dictators is an uncanny ability to size up one’s opponents and strike their weak points. Hitler had an uncanny ability to perceive the motivations of foreign statesmen, until this ability failed him in 1939. Stalin and Mao were experts at political infighting, able to play their opponents off against one another, without anybody realizing how powerful they themselves had become until it was far too late. Saddam seems to share this keen sense. One does not obtain and retain absolute power in a tribal country such as Iraq for as long as he has without it.

Although Saddam seemed to have made a mistake in gauging the resolve of his foreign enemies in 1991 and 2003, he clearly perceived the weakness of the UN, which is a weakness especially common to tax-funded bodies (the UN being funded by monies donated by the tax coffers of member nations), basically, that with no incentive for the completion of a project, the workers on said project will attempt to drag it out forever, knowing that their livelihood depends not on its completion but on its prolonged incompletion. So, his efforts to stall weapons inspections would go over well with the weapons inspectors themselves, for the more he stalled, the more funds, underlings, and time (and thus money) they would gain. And in twelve years the task was still incomplete, the weapons inspectors such as Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei protesting before the 2003 invasion that they “needed more time” - naturally. It’s not a great stretch to assume that for these men, earning their money from ongoing inspections, that after twelve years, a “few more months” wouldn’t have turned out to be enough time either, even with US troops massing on Iraqi borders.

So Saddam, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, gave his opponents what they wanted or what they thought was in their interests whilst actually achieving his own goals. And Saddam continues to make efforts to play his enemies off against one another, like his recent claims to have been tortured. If, as he claims, “the signs [of beating] are all over my body”, then to simply open his shirt in the courtroom would prove this. But he didn’t, and it makes no sense for his gaolers to beat him anyway. But in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, Saddam figures this is worth a shot. More lies will undoubtedly follow before his trial is over, but anyone tempted to listen to them would do well to remember what happened when people believed lies from similar people at, say, Munich in 1938, promises of free elections to be held in Soviet-occupied territory after the defeat of Nazi Germany, or of invitations to free speech in China. By now we should have learned not to listen to the chronically dishonest and self-interested.