By Paul Joseph Watson

Another piece of evidence to add to the patently obvious fact that the United States had resolved to bomb Iraq shortly after 9/11 and that the WMD charade was a staged sideshow is the fact that, according to newly released interrogation documents, Saddam Hussein actually wanted an alliance with the U.S. because he was more afraid of Iran.

“Saddam Hussein feared Iran’s arsenal more than a U.S. attack, and even considered asking ex-President George W. Bush “to protect” Iraq from its neighbor, once secret FBI files show,” reports the New York Daily News.

“The FBI interrogations of the toppled tyrant - codename “Desert Spider” - were declassified after a Freedom of Information Act request.”

Hussein told interrogators that he was more afraid of Iran than the U.S., and would have sought an alliance with Bush in order to protect his country from the “fanatic” Iranian ayatollahs.

Saddam also called Osama Bin Laden a “zealot” and swore that he never sought an alliance with the terror mastermind, adding that he would have preferred to seek a partnership with North Korea.

Hussein repeated that he had ordered the destruction of any remaining WMD before the invasion. “By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the U.S.,” he added.

So desperate were the Bush administration to find a pretext to go into Iraq, that they even proposed staging provocations that would be blamed on Saddam.

As was highlighted again in the news last week, once it became obvious that UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction, the government discussed alternative scenarios to hoodwink the UN into signing a new resolution authorizing military action.

One such proposal was to paint a U2 reconnaissance aircraft in UN colors and fly it over Iraqi territory, goading Saddam to order to aircraft shot at and thus violating UN resolutions.

The new revelation that Saddam would have been happy to become a military ally of the U.S. against Iran proves once again that the invasion of Iraq was not about making the Middle East safer or “liberating” a suppressed population - it was about creating a strategic foothold for U.S. imperial expansion in the region, taking over lucrative resources while handing out no bid contracts to military-industrial cronies, and providing a launch pad for the destabilization campaign and future attack on Iran.