MOYERS: All of us change in 12 years and obviously Saddam Hussein has changed since you last saw him. But what do you know about him that would help us understand what might be going through his mind right now?

WILSON: Well, I think, first of all, it's important to understand that he's a creature of his-- of his country and of his region. His worldview is very limited. It is essentially what he sees from his palace and what his sycophants come and tell him.

So he does not have a broad vision of what's going on around him. There's, I think, a tendency to think of the world as rotating around not just Iraq but around his own palace. Secondly, he's a coldly rational political actor. But given that his worldview is limited, there is a tendency to develop a logical argument where the premise is skewed.

MOYERS: Such as?

WILSON: So he will, for example — four days after he invaded Kuwait when I saw him in August of 1990 — he said that the United States lacked the intestinal fortitude and the stamina to confront his invasion in Kuwait. And it was clear to me that he was drawing upon his interpretation of our experiences in Vietnam, Beirut and possibly Tehran. And he had drawn exactly the wrong lessons from that.

We, in fact, stayed in Vietnam far longer than we should have perhaps. We were there for 15 years. And we suffered 50,000 casualties. We did not cut and run. We did spill the blood of our soldiers for many, many years. Give you another example, the whole decision to go into Kuwait was, from his perspective, rational based upon his understanding of the region and of what the international community would do.

MOYERS: His decision to go…

WILSON: His decision to go into Kuwait. The only reason he had Ambassador Gillespie in to see him and then me in to see him four days after the invasion. Both were unprecedented meetings. He would normally meet only with senior diplomats resident in Baghdad when they were accompanying envoys from their respective capitals. So for him to have Ambassador Gillepsie and then me was really a first.

And it was clear that what he wanted to do in that is he wanted to deflect attention from what he really intended to do. And that's what he did with April Gillespie. He lied to her. He lied to President Mubarak that he was going to allow the negotiating process to go forward.

And with me, he wanted to make sure that the United States would not respond unilaterally. And so that he would get this thrown into the United Nations. And the reason he wanted it in the United Nations was because his experience was with Israeli-Palestinian issues, specifically Resolutions 242 and 338, which related to occupation of Palestinian territories. And as most people know, the Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories has not taken place even though those territories were occupied in the '60s and early '70s.