In an attempt to discredit the Iraqi dictator before the 2003 invasion The CIA considered faking a video showing Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy, it has been claimed. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2010/may/30Saddam7.jpg" align="right" border="2" />Unnamed former officers told the Washington Post it was one of a number of outlandish plans thought up to discredit the Iraqi dictator before the 2003 American-led invasion. "It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera," said one. "Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session." Another scheme was to break into Iraqi television stations with a bogus news bulletin in which a Saddam lookalike would announce that he was stepping down. The double would say he was to be replaced by his son Uday, a notorious sadist and libertine widely despised by Iraqis. "I'm sure you will throw your support behind His Excellency Uday," the fake Saddam would say. Osama video The ideas were developed by the CIA's Iraq Operations Group in collaboration with its Office of Technical Services. According to the officer, the CIA did make a video apparently showing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants sitting beside a campfire quaffing bottles of alcoholic drinks and discussing their sexual trysts with boys. The actors were drawn from "some of us darker-skinned employees". The ideas were strongly opposed by James Pavitt, then head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, the spy agency's clandestine division. A second former CIA officer said the plots were obviously ludicrous and "came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia" and did not understand the Middle East. A third former officer said, "Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East -- nobody cares. Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos."

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In an attempt to discredit the Iraqi dictator before the 2003 invasion

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