The voice you hear is Richard Nixon in the Oval Office in 1971, giving advice to a strapping

young bureaucrat, former college wrestler named Don Rumsfeld.

Dispensing career tips was Nixon's favorite thing, and in this case he was brainstorming

what part of the world young Rumsfeld could use to build his resume as a diplomat.

In case you couldn't hear those last words, Nixon insisted to Rumsfeld, there's nothing

you can do about the Middle East.

Yet 13 years later, Rumsfeld strode through the Republican palace in Baghdad to grip the

hand of one Saddam Hussein.

He was there, both on his own and as a representative of the American government, his goal to offer

US support to Saddam for Saddam's war against Iran.

There's a lot of conversation around that he's a madman and crazy and so forth.

I don't have the belief he is at all.

He's a strong man, he's an intelligent man.

He has a totally different value set than those of us in the United States.

Iraqi cameras captured the meeting on video and 20 years later, during the build up to

the Iraq war, the footage was played to Rumsfeld on CNN.

December 20, 1983, you were meeting with Saddam Hussein.

I think we have some video of that.

Tell me what was going on during this video.

Why did you get this video?

A couple of days after he rewatched that video, Rumsfeld stood in the White House press

room, cameras rolling again as he laid out the case to invade Iraq and to topple his

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