RATHER NOT: For the "journalistic coup of the year," the interview of Saddam Hussein by Dan Rather sure didn't make a lot of news. Due to the ground rules of the interview (much as with an Iraqi election, Saddam's camp essentially controlled every aspect of the process, including the tapes), Rather was able to ask virtually no tough questions and wasn't able to challenge any of Hussein's ludicrous assertions, from his insistance that he was "elected," to his argument that Iraq wasn't "defeated" in the first Gulf War, but rather chose "voluntarily" to withdraw from Kuwait.
I'm not sure if the problem was Rather's timidity, the Iraqi restrictions, or the editing of the tape, but more time was given to Saddam's DOA idea of a "debate" with President Bush than to discussion of gassings-of-the-Kurds or of weapons of mass destruction, and a five-minute tangent was broadcast in which the dictator interrupted his translator for disrespecting the first President Bush by failing to refer to him as "Mr. Bush." Rather did not mention until a later on-camera narration that Saddam himself was much more disrespectful of Bush, Sr., himself, when he tried to kill him in 1993.
Just as in Rather's previous interview with Saddam in 1990, the sitdown was a "huge get" that will ultimately prove worthless from both a journalistic and historical standpoint. And I bet it loses in the ratings to "I'm a Celebrity- Get Me Out of Here!"- it certainly won't out-rate the Robert Blake interview that aired later that night.